Pittsburgh paper wins Scripps award for best business story

Lou Kilzer, Andrew Conte and Jim Wilhelm of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review received $10,000 and the William Brewster Styles Award for “$hadow Economy” on Friday when The Scripps Howard Foundation announced the winners of its annual Scripps Howard Awards, honoring the best work in journalism and journalism education in 2012.

In this yearlong project, the Tribune-Review reporters explored the legitimate and illegitimate uses of offshore accounts and shell companies. They documented the costs we all pay for wheeler-dealers who game the system.

The idea for the package originated in other investigative reporting about China and its extensive use of shell companies in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere. That led to the wide range of regulations in the United States by which some states – Wyoming and Delaware among them – make it easy for foreigners to hide money here.

It also evolved into a story pointing out to the U.S. government that about 20 companies want to export the bulk of America’s excess natural gas production overseas, where it will fetch far more money. That could cost the government billions in taxes because companies can create offshore shell subsidiaries and sell the gas to them at domestic prices.

Those companies, which exist only on paper, then could sell the gas at the higher international price and avoid U.S. taxes – or any taxes at all. The Trib found that 20 of the 25 largest publicly traded companies in the United States have subsidiaries in countries that the government has identified as tax havens or financial secrecy jurisdictions.

 The finalists were Jill Riepenhoff and Mike Wagner of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch for “Credit Scars.”

In addition, The Wall Street Journal received a distinguished award for service to the First Amendment and the Edward Willis Scripps Award for “Watched,” an ongoing project that exposes secretive ways personal information is tracked and used by corporate data-gatherers and government trackers.