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 "shell companies" ...
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Night Fire: Big Oil, Poison Air, And Margie Ricahrd's Fight to Save Her Town
"Night Fire describes how a four-street, all-black community in Norco, Louisiana challenged the world's second biggest oil company, Shell Oil, over a series of deadly plant explosions and recurring sicknesses in their neighborhood."
Tags: oil; explosions; pollution; toxic; air; black; Norco; Shell; Margie Richard; poison;
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Game of Control
While some agencies have chipped away at corruption in football, their efforts have stopped at their national borders. Criminals have observed no boundaries. Reporters for the Organize Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a consortium of investigative reporters, took a months-long look at the business of football in the southeast Europe and the former Soviet Union. They found networks of agents and power stakeholders quietly skimming transfer fees and working through tax havens and companies with shell proxies to avoid taxes. In post-transition Bulgaria some 200 killings have been linked to football. Among the dead are 15 club leaders who attained their posts through questionable means.
Tags: football; soccer; corruption; murder; athletes; organized crime; Eastern Europe
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Secret Land Deal Topples Top Official
Palm Beach County Commission Chairman Tony Masilotti used a secret land trust, "shell companies and straw men" to hide his interest in land deals. The Post tells the story of how he made $10 million "using his political influence." The money was never reported on his financial disclosure forms. He was removed from office and erased from the county's Web site.
Tags: Land deals; fraud; financial disclosure; shell companies
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Flying Gas Prices: The Shell Game
This investigation uncovered an oil company scandal: Shell Oil Company was planning to close a refinery, even though it was making big profits. The investigation found that, even though Shell Oil claimed the oil field was tapped out, the real motivation for the closure was to fix oil prices.
Tags: oil; petroleum; whistleblower; gas; corporate documents; business reporting; monopoly
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High-Tech Shell Game: Stock Fraud on a Global Scale
This investigative story by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch looks at the power of the "boiler room" brokers who sell "stock in obsure U.S. companies" to foreign investors at a markup price. These companies, which sometimes operate with just a phone number and a Web site, eventually pack up and leave the investors holding on to useless and unattractive stock. According to the questionnaire, the investigation "explained how scarce resources, juisdictional questions and other obstacles have prevented American and foreign regulators and law-enforcement officials from shutting down the rings, or even putting a serious dent in their business."
Tags: boiler rooms; Securities and Exchange Commission; National Association of Securities Dealers
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New York Soldiers in Iraq Exposed to Depleted Uranium
Upon their return home from Iraq, several members of the New York Army National Guard complained of a variety of ailments, including urinary and kidney problems, severe breathing problems, and physical weakness. While the army's medical staff was unable to find out what's wrong with them, an independent medical exam (paid for by the Daily News) shows signs that the soldiers were exposed to radioactive dust produced by depleted uranium shells. Most of the soldiers all came from the 442nd Company, formerly stationed in Samawah, Iraq.
Tags: New York Army National Guard; uranium; Samawah; Iraq
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Corporate America's Secret Money Trail: "Dirty Money, Clean Banks" , "The $150 Billion Shell Game", "Homeland Security Pork Barrel"
"These three stories document different ways that the largest U.S. corporations break laws and don't get prosecuted, use secret Cayman Island dummy companies to avoid paying taxes, and place top executives on Presidential Advisory boards that award their companies billions of dollars in federal contracts."
Tags: corporate fraud; taxes; Coke; Intel; Cayman Islands; J.P. Morgan; Wells Fargo; banks; money laundering
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Dressed to kill
Business Week tells the story of how one of the dot-com companies, Critical Path, "wound up being accused of accounting irregularities." The article reveals that "greed, colliding personalities and a long-shot bet made with shareholder money ... derailed the promising company." Critical Path eventually became the target of an SEC probe, and shelled out $17 million to settle shareholder suits.
Tags: business; Internet; Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); stocks and bonds; investments; investors; equity
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Partners in Crime
"They fell in love at Saltfeet District High School in Stoney Creek. Thirty years and $100 million later, they were on the run, the culprits behind one of the biggest financial scandals in Canadian history," reports Toronto Life. The article follows the story of Ron and Loren Koval, founders and rulers of King's, a medical facility in Toronto, as well as owners of a financing company called BACC Capital Corp. The investigation reveals that the latter company, "which was matching corporations and hospitals in need of costly equipment with lenders willing to finance" it, was falsifying the lease contracts for nonexistent equipment. The scam also involved transferring the money from the fraudulent contract to King's, and from King's to shell companies.
Tags: police; detectives; finance; health; medicine; crime; courts; forged endorsement; liability
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Capitalism in a Cold Climate
"The story of Trans World's aluminum empire is filled with bribes, shell companies, profiteers, and more than a few corpses. Then again, in today's Russia, that's pretty much par for the course." In 1999 Fortune was invited by Simon and David Reuben, owners of Trans World - previously Russia's second largest aluminum producer - to engage in a deep investigation into all of their empire's questionable business dealings. During the 90's Trans World was immersed in a world of corruption and money laundering, they were also suspected to have ties with the Russian Mafia.
Tags: Russia; aluminum; money laundering; Mafia; Trans World