Sept. 15 — NBC News has learned that investigators in Europe and the United States are examining whether Islamic fanatic Osama bin Laden may have financed Tuesday’s terror assault on America by stock trades in European exchanges in the days before the attacks.
GERMAN OFFICIALS have asked the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission to look into whether bin Laden’s associates may have “sold short” stock in a Munich, Germany, company that holds secondary insurance on the World Trade Center.
Short-selling can produce huge profits when a stock plummets because of unanticipated bad news — unanticipated, that is, by all except those involved in a conspiracy to cause that bad news.
In a short sale, an investor would borrow a certain number of shares from a broker, immediately sell them, and then once the stock price had fallen, buy shares to return to the broker.
Those who reaped profits from the European short sales may have deposited their profits in American banks, giving U.S. law enforcement agencies jurisdiction.
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra reported Saturday that the FBI is looking into possible short-selling of the stocks of reinsurance companies in the four trading days before the terrorist attacks on the United States on Tuesday. Reinsurance firms assume risk by providing backup insurance for insurance companies.
The stocks of the three reinsurance companies — AXA in France, Munich Re in Germany and Swiss Re in Switzerland — dropped 13 percent to 15 percent in the week before the attack.
Analysts suggested at the time that the drops were anomalous — unexplained — since the reinsurance business was healthy and premium payments were on the way up.
In fact, before the terrorist attacks, the Financial Times on Tuesday published a positive report on the industry.
NBC’s Robert Windrem and Andrea Mitchell contributed to this story.