The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "financial investigations" ...
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Dark Markets
The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of financial markets in 2012 performed a rare and extraordinary service: It exposed evidence of hidden manipulation by corporate executives and professional traders that the markets’ official government watchdogs were utterly unaware of. Reflecting potential widespread harm to millions of ordinary investors, federal prosecutors and securities regulators raced to follow the Journal stories with major investigations. A team of reporters spent six months creating a database examining how more than 20,000 corporate executives traded their own companies’ stocks over the course of eight years. What the team found was disturbing: More than 1,000 executives had generated big profits, or avoided big losses, by trading their company stock in the days ahead of corporate news announcements that led to big moves in the shares. The Journal also exposed a regulatory loophole that had helped the executives take advantage of inside knowledge ahead of other investors. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office and the Securities and Exchange Commission all launched investigations the day the Journal article appeared.
Tags: Financial markets; corporate executives; stocks; Federal Bureau of Investigation
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City Hall Documents Out in the Open
The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters discovered thousands of documents containing the personal and financial information of city residents dumped in the basement of Hartford City Hall. The basement is easily accessible to anyone who enters City Hall. As a result of our investigation, City Hall cleared out the basement, put locks on the door and secured the documents in another location.
Tags: Government; city hall; document security
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Green Energy Going Red
In this series of original and exclusive investigations, CBS documented the fate of $90 billion dollars in green energy stimulus tax spending and dug in to find out why it did not produced the promised results: a boom in green energy technology and products accompanied by a burst in employment. In Solar Scorching, we identified eleven green energy companies besides Solyndra that together got billions of tax dollars, only to declare bankruptcy or suffer other serious financial issues. Since our initial report, the number of failures has risen dramatically. CBS exposed the fact that the government secretly knew what a poor investment some of these companies were, even before it committed taxpayer billions. We obtained exclusive documents showing one project had confidentially been rated as a “junk bond,” but the government committed $43 million tax dollars anyway. It went bankrupt.
Tags: Taxes; green energy; Solyndra; taxpayers
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Bales: Army suspect in Afghan shooting was liable in financial fraud
On the day that tips arose about a U.S. soldier who may have strafed two Afghan villages, I left the office for a flight to Tacoma. Within 48 hours of the soldier’s being identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, I and two colleagues broke the news that the emerging hagiography of Bales drafted by family and attorneys had more to it than the story of a soldier who enlisted at the ripe of 27 driven by outrage over the 2001 terrorist attacks—and then broken down by an unrelenting cycle of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our story started with pure spidey senses: Bales’ s family and lawyer said he had left a stockbroker’s career to enlist, as they explained his call to serve. Yet he had not finished college and clearly had financial troubles, I had determined. And he was active in brokerage in the late 1990s in Florida I learned by checking assorted online records—which raised my suspicions about the quick-money penny stock trading that was commonplace then. Based on those instincts, while also doing the running daily story from Bales’ Army base in Washington state, I had checked some online brokerage records and enlisted Julie Tate to look at others and run through civil and criminal filings in Ohio (Bales’s home state and then nationally). Within an hour, I had found one suspicious record and Julie had found others and we were off on a 30-hour run of investigative reporting and boots on the ground interviews that yielded the breaking news of Bales’s more complicated—and less laudatory—past in the period just before he joined the Army. We located and I interviewed an elderly couple who had lost substantial savings in accounts managed by Bales and received copies of detailed financial records that corroborated their claims and showed Bales as the account manager. We also peeled back corporate records for a now-shuttered firm run by Bales and his brother with backing from a longtime friend and reached him to further flesh out the checkered professional history of the Staff Sgt. at the center of an explosive, fast-moving and intensely competitive story. The story demanded intense investigative reporting that netted notable results in far far less than 30 days of a breaking event.
Tags: U.S. soldier; Afghanistan; military draft; terrorist attacks; deployment
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Local officials are likely to profit from fracking in Southern Tier
Local government officials have been lobbying the state to the controversial oil and gas extraction process known as fracking. But when they spoke at public hearings and pushed in other forums, were they just representing their communities, or did they have more at stake? In a four-month investigation, SUNY New Paltz students reviewed thousands of public records in two states. The investigation found more than 30 locally elected officials who have been outspoken proponents for fracking. Public records and additional examinations identified about 20 percent of those with more than political philosophy at stake — the chance to gain personally and financially. To open government advocates such as Common Cause, these instances raise concerns about transparency and conflicts of interest among locally elected officials. About six months after publication, and after further moves by local officials to press the state to approve fracking, the state attorney general has launched inquiries into whether local officials have violated conflicts of interest.
Tags: Oil; gas; oil and gas extraction; fracking
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Our Money, Their Failures
A six-week investigation by The Virgin Islands Daily News into the people and the money connected to the U.S. Virgin Islands governor's proposal for a $55 million sports complex. The investigative report was published on one day across 11 pages and achieved the result of stopping the project and forcing the governor to pledge no further contracts without vetting the principals. In the case of the sports complex that the governor and some V.I. senators were trying to push through, the investigation uncovered misrepresentations and a string of financial failures by a number of the private parties in the deal with the governor.
Tags: Government; governor; Virgin Islands
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Excessive Speculation Distorts Commodity Markets, Harms Consumers
The topic of our series was excessive financial speculation in commodity markets. Throughout one year, I worked on a series of labor-intensive investigative pieces showing how the influx of financial speculators in the futures market had distorted the price of crude oil, coffee, cotton and other commodities.
Tags: fiancial speculation; commodity markets; crude oil; commodities
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Excessive Speculation Distorts Commodity Markets, Harms Consumers
The topic of our series was excessive financial speculation in commodity markets. Throughout one year, I worked on a series of labor-intensive investigative pieces showing how the influx of financial speculators in the futures market had distorted the price of crude oil, coffee, cotton and other commodities.
Tags: fiancial speculation; commodity markets; crude oil; commodities
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How Safe Are Your Savings?; The Time Bomb In Your Nest Egg
"The Time Bomb In Your Nest Egg" was the result of an intensive, year-long investigation which revealed how Wall Street firms and major banks are selling structured products by advertising them as safe, sure bets. In fact, they are essentially a repackaged version of the same high-risk products that played a major role in the 2008 financial collapse. "How Safe Are Your Savings?" details the nature of these investments, how they're sold, and who Congress and the SEC need to do to protect investors.
Tags: congress; SEC; wall street; nest egg; savings
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Fiesta Bowl Under Fire; BCS The Money. The Games
The Republic's investigation resulted in the discovery of violations of state and federal campaign finance laws at the Fiesta Bowl and widespread financial mismanagement, including employees being reimbursed for taking luxurious out-of-town trips and visits to strip clubs.
Tags: The Republic; State and Federal Campaign Finance Law; Fiesta Bowl; BCS