You shouldn't have jailed or banned people for things that happened before you got hired.
From your post I can also see you've came close to boundaries you shouldn't have been near, it's best to not care and just act friendly towards other staff no matter what underlying issues there may be.
Holding personal grudges against people is something you shouldn't do either as deputy, you're supposed to treat everyone equally even if they have harrassed you or others in the past.
That aside, the easiest method to become staff on ol'west is to be friends with other admins, yet this counted mostly for the deputy team as other positions required the interested player to have some sort of capabilities in what they were aiming for.
It's also old news that Jeff & Shiz & Homeless Witch (not sure about CtP) have been spawning in weapons and items for personal use, I've seen it happen but when I addressed it Homeless Witch claimed it to only be for testing purposes. You could say these testing purposes last forever.
Their player accounts are ranked as admin although it doesn't seem like these will ever be reset.
As for other people getting free items, like Clown said, you'd get what you make in-game unless there were things attached like requirements(Kills for example).
Yes this does not seem to count for the admins I've listed before since they spawned in whatever they wanted.
There might be more things going in which I don't know about as I haven't even played graal for quite some time now but I shared what I did know.
Admins hosting private events for their friends doesn't sound too surprising to me either although I've never seen it happen when I was staff.
I'd like to say that just because I have talked about some people here doesn't mean I dislike them. Most of these people are very friendly and helpful when they need to be.
It's just that there are issues and things that are unfair in the game which also explains current standards for certain things and since this thread seems to be aimed at showing a light on these issues I decided to make a post aswell.