Germans Tie Terror Groups to Pre-attack Stock Trading

Washington Post & Journal Gazette ---- LINK HERE ^ | August 23, 2001 | William Drozdiak

[t-shirt]

BRUSSELS - The president of Germany's central bank said Saturday there was mounting evidence that people connected to the attacks in New York and Washington sought to profit from the tragedy by engaging in "terrorism insider trading" on European stock and commodity markets.

Ernst Welteke, head of the Bundesbank, said a preliminary review by German regulators.....there were highly suspicious sales of shares in airlines and insurance companies, along with major trades in gold and oil markets, before Sept. 11 that suggest they were conducted with advance knowledge of the attacks.

[t-shirt]

freedom bump

[t-shirt]

bump

[Clinton's a liar]

Thanks for the flag, t-shirt! Did we ever doubt it?

[t-shirt]

bump

[nagdt]

Follow the money...follow the money.

[t-shirt]

bump

[Joe 6-pack]

Thanks for the flag...interesting post....

[AM2000]

Thanks for the flag. Here's the link for anyone who wants it.. http://web.journalgazette.net/content/fwgazette/2001/09/23/news/23i_1a_nws_germansbywilliamdr.htm

[mickie]

I hope there is somme way to stop payment on their accounts.......maybe it's too late.

[RJCogburn]

Besides massive short-selling of airlines and insurance stocks, Welteke said "there was a fundamentally inexplicable rise" in world oil prices just before the attacks that suggest certain groups or people were buying oil contracts that were then sold for a much higher price.

[cajungirl]

Boy would I like to see the list of insider traders,,bet there are people on it we know.

[Mark]

.....people connected to the attacks in New York and Washington sought to profit from the tragedy by engaging in "terrorism insider trading" on European stock and commodity markets.

Ok, time to enter the commodity markets....time for US to BUY PORK BELLIES.

[TheOtherOne]

German regulators said they were paying particularly close attention to "suspect movements" in the stock of Munich Re, Europe's second-biggest reinsurance company, which estimates its losses from death and destruction at the World Trade Center will exceed $2 billion. In the four days before the attacks, the stock lost 13 percent of its value.

[B4Ranch]

I'll bet we elected some of them. Those names won't make it to our eyes.

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

Boy would I like to see the list of insider traders,,bet there are people on it we know.

They will know our wrath. They will not be able to hide on this planet.!!

[G-Rated]

bttt

[aristeides]

This Der Spiegel article claims that, in the two weeks before Sept. 11, there was 20 times the normal activity for put options for American Airlines.

[aristeides]

See my #19.

[sarcasm]

Terror 'made fortune for Bin Laden'

THE terrorist overlords who plotted the attacks on New York and Washington appear to have made a massive financial profit out of the resulting turmoil on international markets, one of the world's top bankers said yesterday.

Ernst Welteke, president of the Bundesbank, said a study by the German central bank pointed strongly to 'terrorism insider trading' in the days leading up to this month's carnage in the US.

He was speaking to reporters during a break in a European Union finance Ministers' meeting in Liège at which it was agreed that regulatory agencies in the 15 member states must work together to investigate the evidence.

'Even in the financial sector, there could be a global network [of terrorists] and we are looking into this,' said Austria's Finance Minister, Karl-Heinz Grasser.

He and his colleagues ordered that a joint report on the regulators' investigations should be ready by 16 October. Their decision provided by far the most authoritative support for persistent rumours that the terrorists could have funded their next strike with huge profits gained from the attacks.

Welteke said: 'There is lots of speculation and rumours at the moment so we have to be careful. But there are ever clearer signs that there were activities on international financial markets which must have been carried out with the necessary expert knowledge.'

His remarks not only reinforced suspicions, but extended them to a much broader area. So far, doubts have centred on dealings in shares and derivatives that are based on movements in share prices. But the Bundesbank president suggested the world's commodity markets might also have been used by terrorist commanders and their intermediaries.

'With the oil price we have seen before the attacks a fundamentally inexplicable rise, which could mean that people have bought oil contracts which were then sold at a higher price,' Welteke said. The gold market had also seen movements 'which need explaining'.

He had earlier said there were signs of unusual investments in German shares before the air attacks.

Belgium's Finance Minister, Didier Reynders, who chaired the informal EU meeting, said investigations were also under way in Belgium, France and several other countries.

The idea of exploiting for profit the death of thousands of people might seem as bizarre as it is repulsive. But it would be all of a piece with the stated aim of the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden.

In February 1998, he was instrumental in forging a new alliance of ultra-radical Islamist groups, the World Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders. A statement issued by the Front ordered all Muslims to obey 'God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money'.

The emerging profiles of those accused of carrying out this month's attack show that most were highly educated men who had lived for long periods in the West and were used to dealing with state-of-the-art technology. It is by no means improbable that they had accomplices who were just as much at home on global financial and commodity markets.

All that was needed to make a fortune from the slaughter was an established relationship with a futures broker or a stockbroker. Then, orders for futures contracts, options and the 'short-selling' of shares could have been placed by telephone or, in some cases, through the internet.

The investment consequences of a catastrophic event like that on 11 September would not have been difficult to predict. The same movements have attended every international crisis in modern times. The price of gold, regarded as an investment of last resort, surges. At the same time, if the Middle East is involved, concern over petro leum supplies pushes up the cost of both crude oil and refined products.

On the day after the attacks, oil prices leapt more than 13 per cent. Gold went up by just over 3 per cent, but has carried on rising since - and by Friday's close it stood 7 per cent higher than on 10 September. A trader knowing what was about to befall America could, moreover, have magnified his profits many times on the derivatives markets.

This could be done either by dealing on margins in the futures markets (where only a fraction of the cost of the security has to be advanced) or by buying 'call' options (contracts that exaggerate the rise beyond a certain point of the prices on which they are based).

In this instance, an 'insider' would also have been able to foresee that the destruction of the World Trade Centre by jets would have disastrous effects on certain types of shares, notably those of insurance companies and airlines. This, too, could have been exploited, either through 'put' options (which move in the opposite direction to 'call' options), or by so-called 'short-selling' (a mechanism that allows investors to benefit from a fall in the shares' value).

Rumours of widespread 'short-selling' can be counted on to depress prices, and in the days leading up to 11 September the shares of three big European insurers, Axa, Munich Re and Swiss Re, all fell sharply. At the same time, the number of 'put' options on the firms' share prices rose above normal levels.

Welteke said yesterday: 'If you look at movements in markets before and after the attack, it makes your brow furrow. But it is extremely difficult to verify it.

[Milosevic2]

The possibilities are :
1. What this "revelation" suggests.
2. Something else.
You can waist time with 1.
But if by now you are aware of the moves of the antichrist you won't. So before you invest your time in 2. I recommend these links :
Myron Fagan and the illuminati
and the most horrible conspiracy ever in History

[Bogie]

Stimmt!Wir finden dass die Kriminalen sind eigentlich wirklich nich so klug!

[sarcasm]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0109230424sep23.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed

From the Chicago Tribune

Tracking trades overseas difficult

Options on firms affected by attacks could net millions

By Robert Manor and Melissa Allison
Tribune staff reporters

September 23, 2001

On the Thursday after the terrorist attack, Chicago Board Options Exchange market maker Jon Najarian noticed that trading in options contracts on American and United Airlines stock had been remarkably active just before terrorists hit the World Trade Center.

"It seemed extraordinary," Najarian said later. "Normally, there's next to no volume in those contracts."

The next day Najarian learned there had also been unusual activity in Europe involving sales of shares in Germany's Munich Re insurance company--a company likely to pay out big claims on the disaster.

If you knew in advance about the attack and wanted to make a fortune, Najarian asked one of his partners, "What else would you sell?" Boeing, the colleague replied, and maybe the stocks of Wall Street securities firms. Najarian checked and found the same pattern: Options trading on jetmaker Boeing Co. and the Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch brokerage firms had risen sharply the week before the attack.

Najarian phoned an exchange official. Breathlessly, he began to describe what he had learned.

"I know," the official said. "The FBI's already been here."

The suspicious trades were part of what traders, securities lawyers and investigators are describing as an extraordinary, unexplained surge in bets against the companies most vulnerable to the attack in the days before it happened. Authorities in at least seven countries are investigating whether people affiliated with the terrorists mounted a sophisticated effort to enrich themselves with more than $100 million in blood money.

Some securities experts caution that it is possible investors had legitimate reasons unrelated to a coming attack for executing the many transactions.

But seasoned investigators such as William McLucas, former enforcement director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, say the trading is suspicious enough to warrant the massive investigation now under way.

"This would get a lot of attention" from law enforcement agencies, McLucas said. It's entirely possible, he adds, that "somebody knew something."

The trades, other experts note, appear to have been executed with a great deal of precision. While options trading rose on United parent UAL Corp. and American parent AMR Corp.-- owners of the planes used in the attack--options on other airlines, such as Delta, Continental and Northwest, traded at normal volumes.

The trades involved "put" options, which entitle holders to sell a certain number of shares of a stock for a specified price during a specified time. Such put options soar in value if a stock's price declines sharply, as occurred on the first trading day after the attack, when United's and American's stock prices plummeted nearly 40 percent.

The Tribune examined trading patterns in American, United, Boeing, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and three other companies whose trading surged during the week before the attack, insurer Marsh & McLennan Cos., oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. and financial-services firm Citigroup Inc., which also has large insurance operations.

All eight companies suffered big stock price drops after the attack. And according to Tribune calculations, options traded the week before the attack in those eight companies could have yielded profits of $163 million or more.

Still, if terrorists tried to use financial markets to profit from the destruction of the World Trade Center, they may find it difficult or impossible to cash in.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange and other financial exchanges around the country reacted almost instantly after the attack, searching for suspicious trades that might indicate someone knew in advance a disaster was imminent and wanted to profit from it.

The Securities and Exchange Commission very likely froze some suspect option trades at the CBOE and other exchanges shortly after the attack, securities lawyers say, although it remains far from certain that those trades were made by terrorists. The FBI is also examining the trades.

Options worth millions of dollars in hard-hit companies like Boeing and United Airlines remain outstanding, with no one having stepped forward to claim the money, traders say. That is highly unusual, as the owners of the options would ordinarily take profits as soon as possible.

The CBOE and SEC declined to confirm or deny that trades were frozen after regulators closed financial markets on the morning of Sept. 11. But in a statement on Wednesday, Stephen Cutler, the SEC's acting enforcement director, took the unusual step of confirming that the SEC is among the agencies investigating the trades.

"This is obviously a matter of utmost importance," Cutler said. "We are working closely with other federal law enforcement authorities, as well as the self-regulatory organizations and our foreign regulatory counterparts, to provide all possible assistance."

Mary Bender, who as chief regulatory officer at the CBOE is in charge of investigating suspicious option trades, said her staff began looking for unusual trades immediately after the attack.

"All of the option exchanges cooperate," Bender said. "When an event like this occurs there is an immediate huddle" as the nation's five options exchanges share information.

The exchanges, Bender said, look for situations in which an individual has advance knowledge about an event that will affect a company's stock price and uses that knowledge to make a profit.

Bender said that if her staff found anything unusual--and she would not say whether they did--the CBOE would immediately notify the SEC. Typically the exchange provides the government with the name of the person or trading firm that placed the trade, plus any Social Security numbers and brokerage account numbers affiliated with the trade, in a day or less.

"We can identify you under most circumstances," Bender said.

The SEC can also move quickly. Government attorneys, for instance, can obtain a court order freezing a trade in a matter of hours. The SEC had an advantage in moving on unusual trades because the nation's financial markets were closed for four days after the attack, meaning no one could trade.

But there were obvious complicating factors. The SEC's New York enforcement office was located in the World Trade Center and demolished in the attack. Meanwhile, the nation's capital was under enemy attack and many government offices were evacuated.

Joseph Goldstein, formerly associate director of enforcement at the SEC, said the agency would have remained focused despite the uproar in government.

"The SEC is a very efficient organization," he said. "If the commission thought it would be appropriate to take action, it would do so."

The SEC, Treasury Department, Internal Revenue Service, National Security Agency and other arms of the government are intently investigating terrorist financing, particularly looking at money supporting Osama bin Laden. The intent is to seize or destroy financial assets that could be used against the United States.

If investigators conclude the options and stock trades were illegitimate, they will try to identify who made them and where the profits were intended to go.

Securities lawyers say that with the information provided by the CBOE and other exchanges, it is easy to identify and investigate who made the suspect trades--if those persons live in the U.S. or Canada. But it becomes difficult to trace individuals abroad if they take precautions to avoid exposure.

"People who move funds around for criminal organizations and terrorist groups have very sophisticated people advising them," said John Olson, a Washington attorney who specializes in securities law. He said foreign governments typically cooperate with U.S. investigators, but it is still possible to structure financial transactions to allow a person to remain anonymous, at least for a time.

For example, a Spanish brokerage house might place a trade with the CBOE on behalf of a customer, a Bermuda corporation. The Spanish broker will cooperate with the SEC.

But if the Bermuda corporation is controlled by an unregistered Malaysian investment fund, which in turn is owned by an obscure charity based in Syria, it can take investigators weeks or months to run down who actually profited.

"The more continents and the more countries you span, the more difficult it becomes" to follow, said Betty Santangelo, a New York lawyer who has studied money laundering.

Copyright © 2001, Chicago Tribune

[Bogie]

Und warum sollen sie bezallen?

[aristeides]

Here's the Der Spiegel article on Welteke's statement. According to this article, there was suspicious activity in put options for United Airlines and American Airlines in Chicago on Sept. 6 and 7. Those, of course, are the airlines whose flights were hijacked on Sept. 11.

[Bogie]

#27

Thanks! Very good!

[goody2shooz]

Those so called "well educated Saudi Arabian young men" are actually impostors using stolen ID posing as Saudi Arabian. The identifications were stolen from men murdered in 1990, and whose families were all murdered as well. The evidence points towards Iraq.

Iraq has experts in securities trading capable of carrying off the short selling scam. Osama bin Laden is beginning to look less and less like the mastermind and more and more like a dupe living in tents and caves.

[jmp702]

Thanks for posting this article. Freedomnews posting this related article earlier in the week and I've been waiting to hear follow-up stories.

It seems that the press has no way of independently sourcing who may be the individuals or entities who engaged in the short selling. Publication of who had knowledge and short sold may have to go through some governmental approval before being released as it could shine light where they prefer darkness.

As B4Ranch said, there are names and entities that will never reach our eyes because of protected status.

[TheOtherOne]

It seems you are the one speculating. Study the stock...

http://www.munichre.com/

[Alberta's Child]

It's amazing that these "terrorists" were dumb enough to leave this kind of paper trail. For that matter, why isn't there a mechanism in place that tips off securities regulators and law enforcement agencies whenever this kind of "unusual" selling takes place?

[LiberteeBell]

I can't imagine who you might be talking about. /sarcasm

[VOA]

To paraphrase a line from "Full Metal Jacket",
"Son, inside every violent militant Islamic terroist, there is a capitalistic America
just trying to break out!
Even Osama bin Laden!

[VOA]

Germans Tie Terror Groups to Pre-attack Stock Trading

And I forgot...it takes some money to pay for all the lap-dances that one of the
future hijackers was getting at a Florida strip-joint.
I'm not really criticizing the guy...I'm sure most folks would need to let off a little steam
right before an impending martyrdom!

[WIMom]

The pardon list comes to mind....

[Economist_MA]

I like short-selling, but it's a relatively conservative form of investment.

Short-selling can be extremly agressive since it can be a highly leveraged directional bet. It depends on your margin requirement - if you have a 10% initial margin, then your example would lead to a 100-200% return over a few days. Not bad! If you additionally borrow the money to put up the margin, you can lever your position further.

[Economist_MA]

Stocks move 13% in an HOUR for no particular reason at all, other than a temporary drought of buyers or sellers.

Are you trading in penny stocks? Movements of this magnitude without identifiable news are extremly rare unless caused by price discreteness in penny stocks. The average annual standard deviation for US stocks in the S&P is somewhere around 30 to 40 percent, and stocks are reasonably close to a random walk. Which implies that volatility scales roughly with the square root of time.

[Patriot1]

That is absolutely disgusting. These people are total slime.

[True Capitalist]

I wouldn't discount Osama bin Ladin's financial savy. He has degrees in economics and civil-engineering and has lots of experience running businesses in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, & Afgahanstain. Prior to his exile from Saudi Arabia, Osama did extensive fund raising with the kindgdom's fincancial and business elite - many of which were contected with the Bin Laden Group's construction empire.

al-Qaida has been described as the terrorists' Ford Foundation - a clearing house dowling out funds to militant islamics around the world.

[dalebert]

With all the press this is getting those accounts will be empty.

[t-shirt]

Without the CIA where would bin Laden be?

[t-shirt]

Osami bin Laden has millionare/billionare relatives and associates in Boston(including his brother) and in Saudi Arabia. He has other accounts and assets worldwide. He's not worried about his accounts in Britain and Germany.

[jmp702]

With the rush to assign the terrorist attacks to bin laden, and the subsequent new conferences whenever material linking him to the attacks was discovered, I would think that if it was possible to trace unusual market activity to him that his name would have been linked.

It seems highly suspect, then, that the whos or whats that played the market in anticipation of the attacks, has not been released. And probably some never will.

[TERMINATTOR]

I'm going long on the first company that announces pork ammo.

Luke 22:36 (KJV) --Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

Got sword? (M1 Garand ==>CMP)

No mercy, no quarter!
May the jihadists burn in hell for eternity!
Help speed them on their way!

Molon Labe!

Bible quotes in favor of annihilating jihadists
Poll: bin Laden's skull can be best used as an ....

[True Capitalist]

Also, the cost of these terrorist attacks were amazingly low. Many of these so-called "sleeper" cells had became self-suficient with the terrorists taking jobs in the community and supporting themselves to a large extent. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much capital for terrorist attacks being committed by people willing to die for the cause.

[harpo11]

ditto!

[ValerieUSA]

I clicked on the link... I'll just have to take your word for it.

[Rockitz]

I called this angle on the day of the attack. See http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3b9eca466aa7.htm#75

Not really surprising........greed and evil walk hand in hand. Hope this can be prosecuted and funds can be seized.