Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who spent as much as $150 million on independent expenditures to bolster Republicans in the 2012 election, has informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that his Las Vegas Sands Corporation “likely violated a federal law against bribing foreign officials.”

“[T]here were likely violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions” of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the company said in its annual regulatory report published on Friday. Late last year, Adelson reportedly held meetings with at least one House GOP leader to discuss “possible changes to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” arguing that he had been the target of federal investigations under the Act as retribution for his strong support for Republican candidates.

The Las Vegas Sands Corporation is suspected of improperly and in some cases illegally bribing Chinese government officials to expand its business in China. The company may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with a $700,000 payment to a Chinese associate and worked with organized crime gangs to drive business from mainland China to their Macau casino.

Since the election, Adelson said that plans to double his contributions to Republican candidates and with an estimated net worth of almost $25 billion, he could theoretically spend $500,000 on every single Republican House and Senate nominee for the next 186 years.

Billionaire Casino Mogul Sheldon Adelson

According to the report:

This coming week, Adelson plans to visit Washington, according to three separate GOP sources familiar with his travel schedule. While here, he’s arranged Hill meetings with at least one House GOP leader in which he is expected to discuss key issues, including possible changes to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the anti-bribery law that undergirds one federal probe into his casino network, according to a Republican attorney with knowledge of his plans.

Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands is under investigation in two countries for possible corrupt practices. By weakening the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, his company could potential be let off the hook for any misdeeds.

Adelson vowed in April to keep the bulk of his future political spending undisclosed, because he believed the media’s use of the phrase “casino mogul” when reporting on his donations was “not helpful to the person” he was trying to elect. The voters proved him correct on that: nearly all of his favored candidates lost on election day.

Billionaire Casino Mogul & GOP Donor Sheldon Adelson

To date, however, the courts have left federal limits on contributions directly to candidates or political parties largely unmolested. Under federal law, individual donations to candidates are limited to $2,500 per candidate, per election, and total contributions to candidates, political party committees and similar organizations are limited to $117,000 every two years. Thus, GOP billionaire Sheldon Adelson can currently give tens of millions of dollars to groups trying to elect Republicans that are separate from the Republican Party, but there remains a cap on how much he can give the GOP directly.

A lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee now wants to eliminate most of these modest restrictions on election buying, and eliminate the $117,000 cap on donations by people like Adelson. Moreover, because of a federal law that requires the Supreme Court to hear certain campaign finance cases, the Supreme Court is now almost certain to take the case — potentially handing the Republican Party their biggest Supreme Court victory since Citizens United.

As the lower court decision rejecting the GOP’s attempt to suspend the donation limits explains, the likely impact of a Republican victory would be enabling billionaires to launder as much money as they want through political party committees to the candidates of their choice:

Eliminating the aggregate limits means an individual might, for example, give half-a-million dollars in a single check to a joint fundraising committee comprising a party’s presidential candidate, the party’s national party committee, and most of the party’s state party committees. After the fundraiser, the committees are required to divvy the contributions to ensure that no committee receives more than its permitted share, but because party committees may transfer unlimited amounts of money to other party committees of the same party, the half-a-million-dollar contribution might nevertheless find its way to a single committee’s coffers. That committee, in turn, might use the money for coordinated expenditures, which have no “significant functional difference” from the party’s direct candidate contributions. The candidate who knows the coordinated expenditure funding derives from that single large check at the joint fundraising event will know precisely where to lay the wreath of gratitude.

Notably, this opinion was authored by Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who is arguably the most conservative judge in the country. Brown once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.” She authored an opinion earlier this year suggesting that any effort to regulate labor, business or Wall Street is constitutionally suspect. Yet even Brown acknowledges in her opinion the corrupting impact of unlimited money pouring directly to a political party.

Nevertheless, Judge Brown is obligated to follow previous Supreme Court precedents protecting campaign finance laws. The justices are not. Her opinion upholding the donation limits is now headed to the same five Republican justices who couldn’t figure out how corporations buying elections might lead to corruption when they decided Citizens United.

Billionaire GOP Casino Mogul Sheldon Adelson

Due to a surviving remnant of campaign finance regulation, television stations are required to offer candidates advertising time at the “lowest unit rate.” They are not required to do the same for super-PACs or political parties. . . .

The Obama campaign (excluding super-Pacs and the party) entered September with about $88 million compared with about $50 million for the Romney campaign (ditto on the exclusions). So almost all of the pro-Obama money — $88 million of $101 million — is eligible for lowest unit rate while less than one third of the pro-Romney money — $50 million of $165 million — is. In recent months, television rates for super-PACs have cost several times — sometimes even five or six times — the rate paid by candidates. As the election nears, station inventory contracts and prices rise for candidates, that differential will shrink. But super-PACs will still probably pay double or more what candidates pay for advertising time.

So the good news for Obama is the dollar he raises from an auto worker in Detroit could be worth as much as five or six dollars from Romney billionaires like Sheldon Adelson or Charles and David Koch. The bad news for Obama is that Adelson is worth more than the gross domestic product of 23 nations put together. So Adelson can effortlessly toss off $10 million checks to support Mitt Romney, while Obama must endure the far more painstaking process of raising money from hundreds of Americans contributing far, far less.

Billionaire Casino Mogul Sheldon Adelson

Though Adelson said in April that he would make his future contributions through secretive 501(c)(4) to avoid having his multi-million dollar donations publicly disclosed, in June he donated $1 million to Freedom PAC. That contribution represents the lion’s share of the roughly $1.1 million the super PAC has reported raising to date. With his largess, the group reported a $997,500 ad buy Tuesday in support of Mack.

The ad — titled “Proud” — says Mack would be a “conservative senator for change” and would back “less taxes [sic], less spending, and more jobs.” Indeed Mack has signed Grover Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes for any reason, ever. Mack has also endorsed Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan — who have promised more tax cuts for the rich — as “America’s comeback team.”

Thanks to Citizens United and subsequent court rulings, billionaires like Adelson can now spend as much as they have to fund “independent expenditures” through super PACs — allowing them to completely circumvent the $2,500-per-election individual contribution limit for donations to federal candidates. Adelson’s now-legal attempts to buy the presidency and buy congressional seats like this one have so far cost him and his wife more than $42 million already this cycle.

But if the controversial billionaire gets his way, he stands to get back that and much more. By electing Mitt Romney and a supportive Senate majority with anti-tax Republicans like Mack, Adelson could save $2.3 billion in taxes.

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