In Filing, Casino Operator Admits Likely Violation of an Antibribery Law

 In its annual regulatory report published by the commission on Friday, the Sands reported that its audit committee and independent accountants had determined that “there were likely violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions” of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

 The disclosure comes amid an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into the company’s business activities in China.

 It is the company’s first public acknowledgment of possible wrongdoing. Ron Reese, a spokesman for the Sands, declined to comment further.

The company’s activities in mainland China, including an attempt to set up a trade center in Beijing and create a sponsored basketball team, as well as tens of millions of dollars in payments the Sands made through a Chinese intermediary, had become a focus of the federal investigation, according to reporting by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in August.

 In its filing, the Sands said that it did not believe the findings would have material impact on its financial statements, or that they warranted revisions in its past statements. The company said that it was too early to determine whether the investigation would result in any losses. “The company is cooperating with all investigations,” the statement said.

 The Sands’ activities in China came under the scrutiny of federal investigators after 2010, when Steven C. Jacobs, the former president of the company’s operations in Macau, filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit in which he charged that he had been pressured to exercise improper leverage against government officials. He also accused the company of turning a blind eye toward Chinese organized crime figures operating in its casinos.

 Mr. Adelson began his push into China over a decade ago, after the authorities began offering a limited number of gambling licenses in Macau, a semiautonomous archipelago in the Pearl River Delta that is the only place in the country where casino gambling is legal.

 But as with many lucrative business spheres in China, the gambling industry on Macau is laced with corruption. Companies must rely on the good will of Chinese officials to secure licenses and contracts. Officials control even the flow of visitors, many of whom come on government-run junkets from the mainland.

 As he maneuvered to enter Macau’s gambling market, Mr. Adelson, who is well known in the United States for his financial and political clout, became enmeshed in often intertwining political and business dealings. At one point he reportedly intervened on behalf of the Chinese government to help stall a House resolution condemning the country’s bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics on the basis of its human rights record.

 In 2004, he opened his first casino there, the Sands Macau, the enclave’s first foreign owned gambling establishment. This was followed by his $2.4 billion Venetian in 2007.

 Some Sands subsidiaries have also come under investigation by Chinese authorities for violations that included using money for business purposes not reported to the authorities, resulting in fines of over a million dollars.

 Success in Macau has made Mr. Adelson, 78, one of the richest people in the world. He and his wife, Miriam, own 53.2 percent of Las Vegas Sands, the world’s biggest casino company by market value. Last year, Forbes estimated his fortune at $24.9 billion.

 Mr. Adelson became the biggest single donor in political history during the 2012 presidential election, giving more than $60 million to eight Republican candidates, including Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, through “super PACs.” He presides over a global empire of casinos, hotels and convention centers.

Michael Luo and Thomas Gaffney contributed reporting.

Oprah Winfrey Dad Admits Oprah Paid For Divorce Because Ex-Wife Was Spending Too Much Money

Vernon Winfrey, 79, decided to break up with Barbara, his wife of 12 years, after becoming sick of her spendthrift ways, which he says almost cost him his barbershop business, and after confiding his fears to his daughter’s long-term partner Stedman Graham, Oprah stepped in to help.

Vernon said: “One day when Stedman was in town for a speaking engagement, I told him over dinner what was going on and that I didn’t know how I was going to handle it but I wanted out of my marriage.

“He asked if I needed help and I said ‘Yes I believe so’. He immediately told Oprah and she told me to hire attorneys and she would take care of it.”

Refusing to leave Vernon filed for divorce in June and claims his wife spent most of his money and is refusing to leave the $1.6m Nashville home Oprah bought for him.

He told National Enquirer magazine: “I’ve filed for divorce and moved out of the beautiful home Oprah bought me to live in but I don’t own it.

“Barbara was spending money as if I were Oprah.”

No more free rides boo!

Oprah has always looked out for her daddy Vernon despite his immature behavior, philandering and potentially outing his daughter. She is the better person for turning the other cheek. The soon to be ex step mother needs to become gainfully employed and self supporting because Oprah’s legal team will ensure her ride is over.

Ikea Admits Use of Forced Labor in the 1980s

A report by auditors at Ernst & Young concluded that Ikea, a Swedish company, knowingly benefited from forced labor in the former East Germany to manufacture some of its products in the 1980s. Ikea had commissioned the report in May as a result of accusations that both political and criminal prisoners were involved in making components of Ikea furniture and that some Ikea employees knew about it.

“Even though Ikea Group took steps to secure that prisoners were not used in production, it is now clear that these measures were not effective enough,” the company said in a statement on Friday.

The use of political prisoners as forced labor, even decades ago, is a publicity disaster for a company that with its familiar blue and yellow logo seems at times like a cultural ambassador for Sweden. Inexpensive Ikea furnishings have filled countless student apartments and the homes of millions of young families around the world.

Accusations against Ikea started to appear about a year ago in news media reports in Germany and Sweden. Ikea’s admission has given new impetus to efforts by victims’ groups to receive compensation for work they were forced to perform under the Communist government in East Germany, an issue that has long been overshadowed here by the large and deadly slave-labor program under the Nazis.

“There’s little recognition,” said Hugo Diederich, the chairman of the Association of Victims of Stalinism, himself a former forced laborer, after a news conference here a short walk from the former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing, in a building that stands along the path of the Berlin Wall.

Ikea is not the only company that has been linked to forced labor in the former East Germany by purchasing goods from suppliers there, though the actual number may never be known.

Mr. Diederich said that after an attempt to escape from East Germany, he was forced to make steel pipes for the firms Klöckner & Company and Mannesmann.

At least two well-known mail-order companies in the former West Germany, Neckermann and Quelle, which have since run into financial trouble, have also been accused of using forced labor.

Christian Sachse, a Berlin historian, said forced labor permeated institutions across East Germany, and that it would take “years of research to properly understand the field.”

Mr. Diederich said that more needs to be done for the victims, many of whom today live under worse circumstances than their former tormentors. “This will raise the pressure enormously on politicians to act,” he added.

Ikea’s announcement received a mixed response. There was praise that the company had made an effort to uncover unpleasant facts about its past, but also criticism that it had not been transparent enough with the results. Rather than releasing the entire report, the company made only a four-page summary available, citing privacy concerns.

But Steffen Alisch, a researcher on prisons in the former East Germany at the Free University in Berlin, said, “They have to make the entire report available, and they have to do it quickly.”

The fact that Ikea retained Ernst & Young for the inquiry instead of using independent academic experts also raised questions. “Ernst & Young has no experience with research into dictatorships and is clearly not objective,” said Ronald Lässig, chairman of the East German victims’ group DDR-Opfer-Hilfe. “What Ikea did today was little more than an event for show.”

Investigators examined 20,000 pages of internal Ikea records, as well as 80,000 pages of documents from federal and state archives. They interviewed about 90 people, including current and former Ikea workers and witnesses from East Germany.

A political prisoner in Naumburg, about an hour’s drive from Leipzig, told investigators that he was sent to VEB Metallwaren Naumburg, one of East Germany’s state-owned enterprises. He was put to work placing metal pegs in chair legs and furniture rollers, and remembered seeing boxes with the Ikea logo.

A purchaser for the company said that “the use of prison labor was not an official Ikea strategy, but that there was an awareness within the company about the issue.”

“The G.D.R. did not differentiate between political and criminal prisoners,” Ernst & Young wrote, referring to East Germany, adding that “during this time period, many innocent individuals were sent to prison.” Ikea repeatedly raised concerns about the possible use of forced labor at the time but no action was taken, the report said.

Jochen Staadt, a professor at the Free University of Berlin, said it was well known at the time that East Germany was using prisoners to work in factories but that West Germany encouraged the production of goods in the East because it allowed the East to reduce its debt. At the same time, companies liked to move production to East Germany because costs were lower.

Professor Staadt said companies like Ikea would still have paid for the work in East Germany but that the pay never reached the workers. “It was pocketed by the G.D.R.,” he said.

Ikea employees did visit the production sites in East Germany, but rules governing such visits were strict, that way reducing the effectiveness of site inspections. Any visit had to be registered and approved in advance and could take place only in selected parts of the plants, and a representative of the East German government had to be there.

Ikea said Friday it was sorry about the episodes and pledged to donate money to research on forced labor in the former East Germany.

“We deeply regret that this could happen,” Jeanette Skjelmose, sustainability manager at Ikea, said in a statement.

Rainer Wagner, chairman of the victims’ group UOKG, said at the news conference here that “a broad public clarification” was necessary, not just from Ikea but from “all the firms” that used forced labor. But Mr. Wagner also thanked Ikea for its “pioneering role” in helping to bring greater public attention to the subject.

Nicholas Kulish reported from Berlin, and Julia Werdigier from London. Chris Cottrell contributed reporting from Berlin.