Corruption

ACAPULCO, Mexico -- Hundreds of armed vigilantes have taken control of a town on a major highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, arresting local police officers and searching homes after a vigilante leader was killed. Several opened fire on a car of Mexican tourists headed to the beach for Easter week.

POIPET, Cambodia — Soccer betting is illegal in Cambodia, but visitors to this seedy frontier town wouldn’t know it.

In the rundown market where the smell of incense mixes with rotting garbage, betting goes on 24 hours a day inside shiny, glass-fronted parlors emblazoned with photos of famous European soccer players. Fidgety men break from lines of computers displaying odds to place bets with cashiers on matches around the world, from the obscure leagues of India and New Zealand to the giants of Europe.

“We can’t always pronounce the teams we are betting on, but that doesn’t matter,” said Sampoath Pererra, a Sri Lankan palm oil worker who has made his life in Poipet, a two-street town sandwiched between the Cambodian and Thai borders. “The important thing is we can recognize them.”

ISTANBUL — Turkey loves both soccer and strong men, so it’s no surprise that Aziz Yildirim is a household name.

A civil engineer, Yildirim made a fortune in military contracts with the government and NATO before turning his attention to Istanbul’s Fenerbahce soccer club, a perennial title contender with a vocal fan base nicknamed “the Republic of Fenerbahce.”

As chairman since 1998, Yildirim built up not only the local soccer club, but also its clubs in basketball, volleyball and table tennis. He renovated the stadium, increasing it to 52,000 seats and installing outdoor heating.

Under his leadership, Fenerbahce became one of the world’s top 20 wealthiest soccer clubs and was the pride of Turkey as it ventured often into Europe’s lucrative Champions League, which pits the top finishers in each of Europe’s major national leagues. The blustery, volatile Yildirim was as well-known as the prime minister.

In 2012, however, he got attention for all the wrong reasons.

The 60-year-old tycoon was convicted in July by Istanbul’s 16th Heavy Penal Court of “forming and leading a criminal gang” that rigged four games and offered payments to players or rival club officials to fix three others — all so Fenerbahce could stay in the Champions League, a benefit the club estimated to be worth $58.5 million a year. He is appealing his conviction, maintaining his innocence.

ZURICH — Soccer is falling under a cloud of suspicion as never before, sullied by a multibillion-dollar web of match-fixing that is corrupting increasingly larger parts of the world’s most popular sport.

Internet betting, emboldened criminal gangs and even the economic downturn have created conditions that make soccer — or football, as the sport is called around the world — a lucrative target.

Known as “the beautiful game” for its grace, athleticism and traditions of fair play, soccer is under threat of becoming a dirty game.

“Football is in a disastrous state,” said Chris Eaton, director of sport integrity at the International Centre for Sport Security. “Fixing of matches for criminal gambling fraud purposes is absolutely endemic worldwide ... arrogantly happening daily.”

LOS ANGELES — The son of Equatorial Guinea’s president plundered his country’s natural resources through corruption, spending more than $70 million in looted profits on a Malibu mansion, a Gulfstream jet and Michael Jackson memorabilia, the U.S. government said.

SALT LAKE CITY — A Provo city councilman charged with 10 felonies following a string of citizen complaints is scheduled for a court appearance to waive his preliminary hearing.