Nepotism

Everyone who does business in the city of Industry is required to sign up with Mayor David Perez's company. For years, a firm partly owned by the mayor has held an exclusive, multimillion-dollar franchise to pick up trash from the warehouses, manufacturing plants and other commercial enterprises packed into this oddly configured, avidly pro-business San Gabriel Valley city. And that is just one Perez investment thread that runs through town -- a place with fewer than 100 voters, tight-knit City Hall relationships and now a good chance of becoming home to an $800-million stadium complex and Los Angeles' next professional football team.

Los Angeles County's second-highest-ranking employee took numerous steps to secure a county job for her future son-in-law that paid nearly $1,000 more a month than the position called for, according to a confidential audit reviewed by The Times. County auditors said that Sharon Harper, the top deputy to the county's chief executive, had a "clear conflict of interest" in the hiring of Ed'Ward Rhone and that the chief executive "should consider appropriate disciplinary action." The Times had sought the audit for several weeks, submitting public information requests to supervisors' offices and the county auditor controller.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was re-elected to lead his Fatah movement at its first convention in two decades, giving him a new mandate for peace talks with Israel, if he can also mend divisions among his people. Abbas, who succeeded Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after his death in 2004, was elected unopposed, but the movement itself has lost its shine in the last five years. Its old guard has been accused of rampant corruption and nepotism and it has suffered military humiliation at the hands of rival Hamas.

The Veterans Affairs Department handed out $24 million in bonuses to thousands of employees over a two-year period, some under questionable circumstances, the agency's inspector general reported. The inspector general accused one recently retired VA official of acting "as if she was given a blank checkbook," as awards and bonuses were distributed to employees of the Office of Information and Technology in 2007 and 2008. The official, Jennifer S. Duncan, also engaged in nepotism and got $60,000 in bonuses herself, the inspector general said.

Advocates for low-wage caregivers called on authorities Monday to investigate the spending practices of a Los Angeles union and a related charity that have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization's leader. "This is very serious," County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose 1990s legislation allowed the union to organize home-care workers here, said of the financial transactions disclosed by The Times.

The head of California's largest union local has stepped aside in the wake of Times reports that the organization and a related charity paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by his wife and mother-in-law. Tyrone Freeman, president of a Service Employees International Union chapter in Los Angeles, said in a written statement late Wednesday that he was taking a leave of absence and that the local would be placed in a temporary trusteeship.

The Service Employees International Union on Friday removed all elected officers of its biggest California local amid an inquiry into the financial practices of the labor group and a related charity, including payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by its president's relatives.

The Service Employees International Union's headquarters has paid millions of dollars to consulting firms, political nonprofits and individuals with family ties and other personal connections to some of the labor organization's top officers, records show. One company partly owned by a union director also received more than $1 million in SEIU consulting fees. The nation's fastest-growing union, the SEIU bills itself a standard-setter in the drive to reform and modernize the labor movement.

Fresh off her marriage to Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin, biotechnology entrepreneur Anne Wojcicki is now wedded to the company too. In Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed Tuesday, Google disclosed that it invested $3.9 million to obtain a minority stake in Wojcicki's biotech start-up, 23andMe Inc. Some of the money that Mountain View, Calif.-based Google anted up this month was used to repay $2.6 million in financing provided to 23andMe by Brin.

A high-level manager for the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles directed nearly $800,000 in contracts to his brothers and three politically connected firms without competitive bidding or after rigged contests, a Times review has found. The manager, Victor Taracena, oversaw more than 150 contracts worth about half a million dollars that went directly to companies his brothers created, contract files show.