The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Business
Execs benefit from backdating of stock options
Charles Forelle and James Bandler of The Wall Street Journal analyzed grant dates and stock movements and identified several companies with wildly improbable option-grant patterns. “The analysis bolsters recent academic work suggesting that backdating was widespread, particularly from the start of the tech-stock boom in the 1990s through the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform act of 2002.…
Read MoreDubious charities raise millions
Ronald Campbell of The Orange County Register reviewed more than 10,000 pages of court records, financial reports and other documents and found that former associates of imprisoned charity telemarketing king Mitch Gold have raised more than $83 million in four years for dubious charities. Fundraisers and managers kept almost all the cash, leaving just 7…
Read MoreDonations from gambling interests rise in Kan.
Steve Painter and Brent D. Wistrom of The Wichita Eagle analyzed campaign reports and found gambling contributions to legislative campaigns over six years were up by more than 300 percent, while the same period saw no change in Kansas’ gambling laws. Well-financed gambling interests are waging an increasingly expensive political war over where Kansans will…
Read MoreProgram for disabled exploited
Jeff Kosseff, Bryan Denson and Les Zaitz of The Oregonian used hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of documents and visits to more than a dozen charities in seven states to show that a program created to benefit Americans with severe disabilities is being exploited at the cost of the people it was supposed to…
Read MoreTenn. Medicaid pays for most expensive transportation
Nancy Amons of WSMV-Nashville investigated Tennessee’s TennCare (Medicaid) rides program and found that millions of dollars may have been wasted. The investigation found the program assigning patient trips to the most expensive companies, even though that is against its own regulations. “Taxpayers have been overpaying by 40% or more for some trips simply because TennCare…
Read MoreBooming housing industry slows in South Fla.
Matthew Haggman, Lisa Arthur and Tim Henderson of The Miami Herald analyzed home sales over the past five years and found South Florida has gone through the most explosive housing boom in its history. “The land rush has transformed just about every corner and corridor of the region, sending prices skyward since 2000 — more…
Read MoreOilman’s donation invested in his fund
Stephanie Strom of The New York Times investigated Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman turned investor, to show the $165 million that he gave to a tiny charity set up to benefit the golf program at Oklahoma State University was invested in a hedge fund controlled by Pickens’ BP Capital Management. The gift, which helped Pickens…
Read MoreContractors are invisible casualties in Iraq
Alejandra Fernandez-Morera of the Scripps Howard News Service found there are significant invisible casualties of the Iraqi occupation. Almost 505 civilian contractors have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war. “Another 4,744 contractors have been injured, according to insurance claims by 209 companies on file at the Department of Labor.” The investigation found…
Read MoreFederal loans granted for risky businesses
Ben Welsh of the Columbia Missourian used Small Business Administration loan records to show that over the past five years, the number of government-backed loans to Columbia’s bars and restaurants has skyrocketed far beyond previous levels. “Between August 2000 and August 2005, 33 cents of every loan dollar the SBA backed in Columbia — more…
Read MoreFood, tobacco giants share expertise
Patricia Callahan, Jeremy Manier and Delroy Alexander of the Chicago Tribune examined tobacco-lawsuit documents to show that America’s largest foodmaker and its biggest cigarette company have pooled expertise in search of more alluring foods and cigarettes since the dawn of their corporate pairing two decades ago. “Documents show Northfield-based Kraft collaborated on flavor issues with…
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