Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

Gingrich super PAC super donor Sheldon Adelson has businesses under scrutiny by IRS, Justice

Billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who have reportedly given a combined $10 million to Winning Our Future, the super PAC that supports and is run by former staffers of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, were reportedly drawn to him by a shared view of the importance of the U.S. relationship to Israel.

But a review of public records by Sunlight suggests that the couple, who appears to be the former House speaker's most generous political patrons pending the filing of Winning Our Future's first complete financial disclosures later this month with the Federal Election Commission, have considerable financial interests involved in battles with the federal government that Gingrich is vying to head:

1. Adelson's company, the Las Vegas Sands, disclosed in its most recent Securities and Exchange Commission quarterly report that it appealed the results of an Internal Revenue Service audit for the company's 2005 to 2008 tax returns. The audit may result in as much as $23 million in additional tax payments, although the final amount, the company concedes, is "inherently uncertain." The IRS also audited Las Vegas Sands' 2009 return, and recommended additional payments. The filings with the SEC do not list the specific issues in the returns. Forbes reports that Las Vegas Sands has "many unusual transactions between the company or its subsidiaries and entities controlled by Mr. Adelson," some of which could have tax implications. 
2. Las Vegas Sands, which has overseas operations in Macau and Singapore, lobbied Congress over regulations affecting "dual capacity taxpayers," essentially, credits claimed against U.S. taxes by companies that make income tax payments to foreign governments for specific benefits--for example, oil companies that pay foreign taxes on the crude they extract. The Obama administration proposed the credit. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the biggest spenders on lobbying and political influence in the country, seeks to preserve it. 
3. In addition to tax issues, Las Vegas Sands also disclosed in March 2011 that it's the subject of SEC and Justice Department investigations for potentially violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars, among other things, U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials. Las Vegas Sands allegedly put a Chinese official with oversight responsibilities for the company's lucrative Macau operations on its payroll. The company denies wrongdoing and promised to cooperate with the investigation, but notes that "Any determination that we have violated the FCPA could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition."

GOP lawmakers reopen fight over Keystone XL pipeline

As House Republicans reopen efforts Wednesday to win approval for the Keystone XL energy project, new lobbying records filed over the weekend reveal a lopsided spending battle over the controversial proposed pipeline.

The Keystone pipeline has become an emblematic fight for those who see the pipeline as a North American job creator versus those who see it as an environmental disaster.

Environmentalists have applied political pressure through protest, but their lobbying expenditures on the pipeline have been dwarfed by those of their opponents. Three environmental groups that mention Keystone in their lobbying reports -- National Wildlife Federation, League of Conservation Voters and Western Organization of Resource Councils -- had a combined 2012 budget of $335,000 to lobby on a wide range of issues. Meanwhile, TransCanada, the company seeking permission to build the pipeline, spent $1.74 million on federal lobbying. Also backing the pipeline other organizations with substantial Capitol Hill lobbying presences, such as Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell Oil and some labor unions.

Despite Fed's steps toward transparency, much remains opaque

In a bid to increase transparency, the Federal Reserve will for the first time make public the forecasts for benchmark interest rates that will inform discussions at tomorrow's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which sets monetary policy for the nation. But despite this action, there is still plenty of opacity in how the Fed conducts business.

For starters, the Fed delays release of the actual transcripts of these meetings for five years. While the FOMC releases minutes of these meetings three weeks after the fact, the most recent full transcript currently available is for December 12, 2006. And the released transcripts have been edited from the originals. To this day, the only non-edited versions of transcripts of FOMC meetings past are those of meetings during the 1970s, donated by former Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. Scholars have used these records to conduct analyses of past Fed actions. The Fed went so far as to deny that it maintained tape recordings of FOMC meetings until, in 1993, a Congressional probe forced then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was forced to admit to the existence of these records. 

Another transparency shortfall: The Fed doesn't report which European banks benefit from its currency swaps with foreign central banks--an amount that has risen to more than $100 billion since September in response to the European debt crisis. Under such swap agreements, a foreign bank draws on dollars at the Fed in exchange for its own currency. The foreign bank agrees to buy back its currency at a certain date at the same exchange rate, plus interest. This gives the foreign banks, which have become dollar-starved as American investors pull out their money in European ventures, U.S. currency to lend out to banks and institutions. Because the swaps are collateralized with foreign currency and the exchange rate is set, the risk to the Fed is considered low. But critics have argued this information should be made public. At the height of the 2008 financial meltdown, the Fed’s outstanding dollar swaps rose to $586 billion by the end of 2008, according to an audit of Federal Reserve emergency programs recently released by the U.S. General Accountability Office.

PAC Profile: The Tea Party doesn't need unlimited money to make a splash

It's hard to believe given this year's headlines, but not all of the political action committees making an impact on this year's campaign are super PACs.

While most of the attention has focused on the entities that can accept and spend unlimited money, the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, a traditional political action committee that's abiding by federal limits on contributions and spending, got plenty of attention when it launched an ad blitz before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses that accused GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney of being a covert liberal.

Ryan Gill, the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama's vice president, told Sunlight that the group remains "a traditional PAC with a small donor model," meaning it abides by dollar limits on contributions set by the Federal Election Commission. To organize as a super PAC, a committee  must inform the FEC by letter -- such as the one filed with its statement of organization by Winning Our Future, a pro-Newt Gingrich group -- that it intends to take advantage of recent court decisions allowing some groups to collect and spend unlimited funds for political campaigns.