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 "ownership" ...
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Hidden Wealth of Azerbaijan President
The President of oil-rich Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has been compared to a Mafia crime boss in US diplomatic cables, and man analysts refer to him as a dictator. OCCRP looked deeper than those labels and found that the Aliyev family has systematically grabbed shares of the most profitable businesses in the country. Investigative reports by OCCRP and Radio Free Europe have revealed and more importantly proven for the first time that the ruling family has secret ownership stakes through offshore companies in the country’s largest businesses, including banks, construction companies, gold mines and phone companies. The government Aliyev runs gave these shares. The family also has secretly amassed high-end property in places like the Czech Republic. The Azeri government responded to the revelations first with silence and now claims that OCCRP is an agent of the rival Armenian government. Aliyev’s administration also failed to investigate the harassment and blackmail of OCCRP and RFE journalist Khadija Ismayilova earlier this year. While Azerbaijan has worked at improving its image worldwide, OCCRP’s reporting makes clear that a petty dictatorship remains in control.
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Lost Paradise
People who bought retirement or hunting property in north Arkansas learned too late that developer Wayne Watkins didn't record their sales at the county courthouse and that he used land he sold to them as collateral for $2.6 million in loans. When he defaulted, banks foreclosed. Because no legal record existed of the buyers' ownership interest, banks often sold the land again.
Tags: banks; lending; housing; loans; fraud; housing scams; foreclosure
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The American Dream: Hanging by a Thread
"This project is an attempt to measure the health of the middle class by doing original research, then going out into our community to find how the results of the data analysis matched real life in postindustrial Ohio. We found the middle class is shrinking - squeezed on two fronts by steadily decreasing earnings and dramatically increasing costs of the hallmarks of the middle class: home ownership, higher education, affordable health care and a secure retirement."
Tags: Philip Meyer Contest; Ohio; middle class; health care; college; job; home; computer assisted research
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Home Sweet Meth Home
"In Mississippi, former meth homes can be bought and sold without the new owners ever knowing about their home's drug manufacturing history."
Tags: home; house; ownership; meth; crystal meth; narcotics; cleanup laws; public health; family;
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Mayor's family cashes in
"A series of stories revealed that the next generation of Chicago's Daley family has found ways to profit off City Hall, where the family has ruled for most of more than 40 years. Though Mayor Richard M. Daley has long maintained that his family isn't being enriched by his administration, Novak's stories revealed, for the first time, that one of the mayor's children, his soldier-son Patrick Daley, made money off a city contract - and neither the younger Daley nor the company disclosed his ownership interest in the company, despite being required to do so by city ordinances his father signed."
Tags: corruption; mayor; city contract; ownership interest; silent partners
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The High Price of Home Ownership
"In 2007, the housing market was in turmoil. People were losing their homes. Many blamed the homeowners." The authors wanted to see "what role lenders played nto putting unsuspecting homeowners into precarious loans that they could not afford." They found that "not only were lender partially to blame, but there were wide disparities in the race" of who was most affected.
Tags: homeownership; lenders; corruption; racial gap; race; loans; foreclosure; home mortage
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Gun permits drop 25% in Bay State
"That gun ownership, especially in urban areas had dropped dramatically over the past six years, driven by more restrictive laws, higher licensing fees and cultural changes."
Tags: gun; ownership; urban; Public Safety;
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Updated Version of Well Connected Media Tracker
In October 2006, Well Connected, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, updated its Media Tracker. The Tracker is a tool to "identify the source of news and information filtered to their community through newspapers, broadcast, cable, satellite, phone lines and broadband." The Tracker also features political information. This set of stories tells about the new version of Media Tracker, with background stories which profile many of the "top companies in broadcast television, radio, telephone, cellular, cable, broadband and satellite TV and radio."
Tags: Internet; Media Tracker; media ownership; Well Connected; information filters; Center for Public Integrity
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Land of Confusion
At Country Club of the Poconos, some residents of this large home development "weren't conveyed any land with their home purchases." The land had never been subdivided for individual ownership "on plans approved by the township and recorded in the deeds office." and a new property owners association eventually obtained the deed on the land as "open space." While that association has a property tax exemption for the open space, individual home buyers are still paying taxes "on property they don't own."
Tags: Country Club of the Poconos; land development; land ownership
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Who Took Land From Our Churches?
Cook County's District attorney, along with his associates, were found to have taken 60 parcels of land that were owned by 20 churhces, businesses and not-for-profit organizations. They were unaware the land was even pirated from them until the report came out in the Chicago Tribune.
Tags: fraud; realty; land; ownership; property; steal; stolen; acre