Saudi millionaire Usama Bin Ladin, the main suspect in the recent terrorist attacks in the United States, might have used European finance houses and even speculated before the attacks in the US, two European newspapers reported on Monday.
US stock regulators confirmed Monday, September 17, they were investigating the possibility that terrorists sought to profit from last week's attacks by short-selling stocks of firms likely to be affected.
"Our enforcement division has been looking into a variety of market actions that could be linked to these terrible acts including the subjects of the rumors," said Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt, according to an SEC spokesman.
The rumors referred to by Pitt were reports that Saudi multi-millionaire Usama Bin Ladin, who is the main suspect behind the attacks, placed investments betting on declines in big insurance companies just before the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The reports said the trades employed a technique known as short selling, which allows a trader to gain when a stock price declines.
Two European stock exchanges — Frankfurt and Milan — said Monday they are probing evidence of suspicious stock trading linked to the terrorist attacks in the US. Sabine Reimer, a spokeswoman for BAWe, the German stock market watchdog, told AFP: "We're studying movements in trade and in prices in the days leading up to the attacks."
She said investigators are looking at whether speculators placed so-called "put options", contracts to sell at a fixed price, on stocks, knowing that the market was about to fall sharply. The investigation was still informal and was not concentrating on specific stocks, Reimer added. But she said that insurance stocks, in particular, were coming under scrutiny.
In Italy, Italian stock market authority Consob said it was investigating suspicious trading movements on September 10, the day before the attacks, and on Tuesday. "Checks are being made for Tuesday and as well as for the previous day," a Consob spokesman said.
The confirmation of investigations by German and Italian authorities followed a rash of newspaper reports on the possible manipulation of markets by terrorist insiders.
In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino said on Monday that terrorist organizations were behind speculation on international financial markets.
Martino said: "I think that there are terrorist states and organizations behind speculation on the international markets." "Those who organized the attacks on New York are clear-minded in their folly. Because everybody knows that money is power," he said. "But if the intelligence services of all countries work together, the financiers who work for the terrorists will not escape the hunt," Martino said.
Italian and Swiss newspapers also reported on Monday alleged links between the terrorist groups and suspicious movements in shares prices. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, quoting information from the Italian intelligence service, alleged that Saudi multi-millionaire Usama Bin Ladin, the main suspect behind the attacks, used a Milan brokerage to invest in European markets. However, the newspaper said: "For the moment, the name of this company has not been identified."
Corriere della Sera reported that "German authorities informed the American SEC (Security Exchange Commission, the US stockmarket regulator) of 'suspect movements' on the most important European reinsurance company, Munich Re, the shares of which have lost 22 percent of their value during the last two months, 13 percent of which in the week preceding the attacks," the Corriere reported.
The newspaper also reported that US authorities were investigating stock market operations on shares in French insurer AXA. The paper said European authorities were investigating possible financial links in Luxembourg, Switzerland, Monte Carlo and especially Cyprus, where bin Laden's organization was reported to have had a base, with a company, offices and employees.
Meanwhile, Swiss-German newspaper Blick reported on Monday that a financial group with a branch in Switzerland might have served as an investment vehicle for the fortune of bin Laden. Blick, citing French publication Medintelligence as a source, said that part of Bin Ladin's fortune had passed through the financial group Taqwa, which means "fear of God" in Arabic.
The chief of Swiss intelligence services Urs von Daenicken was quoted by the French publication as saying: "Swiss police have been interested for years in this company, which is also a bank, but have not yet been able to establish a link with bin Laden."
Blick reported that one of the members of the board of directors of Taqwa, Ahmed Huber, had acknowledged meeting members of Bin Ladin's entourage in Beirut during an Islamic conference, describing them as "very intelligent and very cultivated young people."
However, according to Blick, Huber, who had lost his job as a journalist in Bern for having defended a fatwa death sentence against British author Salman Rushdie, had rejected the possibility that the Taqwa might have been involved with terrorists, saying that the group financed development projects.
The headquarters of Taqwa are in Panama and the branch in Lugano is a subsidiary. Blick said that the managing director of the Lugano operation, Yussuf Nada, who lives by Lake Lugano in Italy, when contacted by telephone, declined to comment. ― (AFP, Riyadh)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
