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 "gifts" ...
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Gift With Strings Trips UCA President
Investigation of the misappropriation of funds by a former UCA President.
Tags: University of Central Arkansas; Gifts; College; President
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"Fiesta Bowl Under Fire" "BCS The Money. The Games"
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. The investigation of the BCS found that public universities lose money playing in BCS games; bowls spend heavily on gifts for schools' top athletic officials; pay for the highest executives at the BCS bowls more than doubled since they reunited in the late 1990s; and three of the top bowls accepted large government subsidies even as their revenue and assets have grown.
Tags: BCS; Fiesta Bowl; college; football; fraud; financial mismanagement
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Tracking Your Tax Dollars
The five-part investigation found Florida state agencies were spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on bonuses, retirement gifts, flowers, gift cards and more. At the same time they laid off state employees and cut services to balance the budget.
Tags: federal stimulus; American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; Stimulus Bill
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Treasury Luxury Travel
The Oregonian's investigation spotlighted an obscure corner of state government where Wall Street practices became business as usual, where a set of high-paid employees were granted special exemptions to operate outside the scope of state gift and ethics laws, and functioned with little internal or public oversight. The newspaper revealed that state investment officers charged with monitoring more than $50 billion in state pension investments routinely travel in luxury, paid for by taxpayers and the Wall Street investment managers they are supposed to be overseeing. They stay at high-end resorts and five-star hotels, eat at celebrated restaurants and fly first class. The tab is often picked up by investment firms managing Oregon's investments, who are competing for hundreds of millions of dollars in fees that the pension fund pays annually. The state treasury didn't monitor that travel. It kept no record of the expenses or gratuities provided its employees. And it ignored the potential conflicts of interest.
Tags: State Government; Corruption; Finance; Wall Street; Exemption; Business; Gift and Ethics Law; Travel; State Treasury; State Employees
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New Orleans's tech contracting scandal
Former top mayoral aide, Greg Meffert, was caught in a web of self-dealing and exposed free vacations that the mayor had received. The series “helped the FBI and other federal investigators track the payments and relationships”. Also, it eventually “led to a 63-count federal criminal indictment against Meffert, his wife and the city vendor, Mark St. Pierre”.
Tags: crime; Mayor Ray Nagin; technology chief; state government; corruption; gifts; city hall; civil trial; city government
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Rat Trap
In the story, an FBI informant has been known to hound the targets of the investigation with money and gifts, but also “led them by the nose”. He has also “prodded, persuaded and cajoled the targets to advance plans to launder money supposedly used to purchase an anti-aircraft missile”. So this article brought up the FBI’s use of informants and the ethical lines crossed by some of them.
Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation; anti-American; violent; terrorists; corruption; Middle Eastern descent
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O.J. Mayo's Inner Circle
NBA star O.J. Mayo was found to have been involved with a secret bank account and credit card used to finance luxurious gifts, meals, and travel. Mayo's agent Calvin Andrews was suspended by the National Basketball Players Association.
Tags: sports agent; USC; Minnesota Timberwolves; Memphis Grizzlies; NCAA; lobbying;
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Dart Travel Spending
CBS 11 News reviewed thousands of pages of documents pertaining to travel expenses and credit card purchases by executives and staff members who manage Dallas Area Rapid Transit, AKA DART. We discovered dozens trips around the country and around the world for seminars. While traveling, executives enjoyed expensive accommodations. The station also found questionable expenditures on expensive catering, gift cards and purchases from Victoria's Secret. The expenses came at a time when the agency faced a $1,000,000,000 budget shortfall that jeopardized key transportation projects. CBS 11 producers followed a group of executives and board members to a transit junket in California where we watched as many skipped key meetings, attended steak dinners and parties thrown by companies who bid on transit projects. The station also watched as DART executives and staff members violated internal policies by using taxis and shuttles instead of local mass transit, a pattern found while reviewing dozens of other out-of-town junkets.
Tags: mass transit; Dallas; fraud; transit authority; travel expenses; questionable spending
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Huck's gift-givers ended up in state posts
Records from Virginia and Arkansas showed that 2008 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee received 90 gifts from 21 people in Arkansas he appointed to state posts while governor.
Tags: bribe; Federal Election Commission; donation;
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A Question of Oversight
Public agency First 5 Kern contracted with the Applied Research Center at California State University, Bakersfield to evaluate First 5's effectiveness in the community. During the research, money from First 5, which is a company that "doles out money from a state tobacco tax" to recipients like schools, was used to pay for items including trips and cars. Some of these gifts went to the researchers, who concluded that "First 5 Kern is making a substantive and significant difference" in people's lives.
Tags: First 5 Kern; California State University, Bakersfield; tobacco tax; distribution of tobacco tax money; illicit gifts