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 "David Evans" ...
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Untangling FOIA: a Test of Obama's Transparency Pledge
Bloomberg News filed Freedom of Information Act requests with 57 federal agencies in June to test President Barack Obama's 2009 promise that his administration would be the most transparent in U.S. history. The series revealed how few departments complied with the law by disclosing the travel costs of top officials in a timely manner. Overall, only eight agencies met the 20-working-day deadline. After six months, nine of 15 cabinet offices and about a third of the agencies overall still had yet to release the documents.
Tags: Freedom of Information Act; FOIA; federal agencies; Obama
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Duping the Donors
The stories show how major charities tell telemarketers to lie about how much of donations is actually going to the charity (sometimes 22 percent, sometimes zero); and other nonprofits that aren't charities makes hundreds of millions of dollars tax free.
Tags: Telemarketers; charities; donations; nonprofits; taxes
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The Secret Sins of Koch Industries
In a four-continent investigation involving 16 reporters, Bloomberg Business News unearthed a multi-decade pattern of crimes and misdeeds by Koch Industries, the company run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Using never-before-published internal documents and on-the-record interviews with former employees, the article reveals that Koch Industries paid bribes to win contracts in Africa, India, and the Middle East.
Tags: koch industries; charles koch; david koch; brothers; bribes; contracts
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Profiting from Fallen Soldiers
Bloomberg finds that more than 130 life insurance companies have been profiting from the death benefits owed to family service members and government workers.
Tags: soldiers; death benefits; life insurance; Prudential; Met Life
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Profiting From Fallen Soldiers
In this series, reporter David Evans exposed how "more than 130 life insurance companies" devised a system that allowed them to profit from death benefits that were "owed to families of service members, government workers and millions of other Americans." MetLife and Prudential led the scheme. Evans revealed that the companies withheld $28 billion owed to the families of deceased soldiers. The story prompted "almost immediate changes in U.S. government policies."
Tags: life insurance; MetLife; Prudential; Robert Gates; Veterans; taxpayer; American Legion; military
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"Big Pharma's Crime Spree"
David Evans investigates the criminal activity of some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. Drug companies are fined billions of dollars for illegally marketing their products, yet continue to do it. Evans asks why.
Tags: Pfizer; Eli Lilly; pharmaceutical; FDA; drugs; Zyprexa; medicaton
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Financial package
"Hedge funds in swaps face peril with rising junk bond defaults" examined the complexity of credit default swaps, which are unregulated securities that were supposed to act as a form of insurance and protect investors against risk. "FDIC may need $150 billion bailout as local bank failures mount" reported that many regional banks in the country would fail within a year because they hadn't realized losses on defaulting mortgages. "Exploiting FDIC loopholes enriches former U.S. bank regulators" revealed that three former government employees created a for-profit company that exploits FDIC rules and helps millionaires insure up to $50 million in bank accounts guaranteed by the FDIC.
Tags: economy; finance; recession; bank; bond; FDIC; mortgage; bailout
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Way Ahead of the Curve
This is a series of three stories by senior writer David Evans that ran in the February, July and November issues of Bloomberg Markets magazine. In "The Risk Nightmare," (July 2008), Evans pierced the opacity and complexity of credit default swaps, unregulated securities that were supposed to act as a form of insurance and protect investors against risk. He found that CDS had built up so many interconnections that one player could jeopardize the entire financial system. In "Banks on the Edge" (November 2008), Evans reported that scores of regional banks across the U.S. would fail within a year because they hadn't yet realized their losses on defaulting mortgages. In "Peddling Tainted Debt to Florida," (February 2008), he reported that Lehman Brothers was both advising and selling toxic debt to Florida's "money market pool." This disclosure prompted a run on the pool, and it was then shut down as the state investigated its holding and worked to restore its creditworthiness.
Tags: Lehman Brothers; Bear Stearns; Florida; Charlie Crist; bank collapse; Wells Fargo; Washington Mutual; bailout
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Toxic Debt
"In 2007, the financial world came unhinged. A rise in late mortgage payments triggered hedge fund blowups, massive Wall Street write-offs, ousted CEOs, Congressional hearings, and intervention by central bankers and finance ministers. In a series of exclusive and prescient stories, Bloomberg exposed the ties that connected unregulated mortgage brokers, fee-hungry Wall Street banks, conflicted credit rating companies, and the managers of money market funds and public pension plans."
Tags: mortgage payments; Wall Street; brokers; banks; credit rating firms
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The Ratings Charade
This investigative piece exposed the central role played by rating companies in the subprime scandal. Ratings firms collaborated with banks o create the very mortgage-backed securities they would then turn around and evaluate. And the credit raters were paid three times as much in fees for this work as they got for grading bonds.
Tags: predatory lending; finance; ratings; credit; mortgages