SEC probes market manipulation

  • Wednesday, September 19, 2001 9:00pm
  • Business

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The enforcement chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission said the agency was pursuing all credible leads in trying to determine whether terrorists tried to profit from stock and options trading ahead of last week’s attacks.

The SEC has reached no conclusions at this point, acting enforcement director Stephen Cutler said in a statement issued Wednesday.

His words came amid extensive international efforts by government regulators and investigators to determine whether terrorists engaged in such market manipulation.

On Tuesday, the world’s largest options market, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, said it was investigating reports of unusual trading activity before the devastating attacks in New York and Washington.

In the days before the attacks, unusually high numbers of put options were purchased for the stocks of AMR Corp. and UAL Corp., the parent companies of American Airlines and United Airlines, which each had two planes hijacked. There was no such trend involving other carriers.

A put option is a contract that gives a holder the right to sell an asset at a specified price before a certain date.

Germany’s stock market regulator said Monday that it was looking into claims of suspicious short-selling of insurance company shares just before the Sept. 11 attacks. As with put options, investors who engage in short-selling are betting that the price of the stock will fall. Washington and several other governments have identified Osama bin Laden as a prime suspect.

"We have received reports that those associated with the terrorist activities of last week may have sought to exploit our securities markets to profit from those activities," Cutler said. "We are vigorously pursuing all credible leads but, at this time, we have drawn no conclusions."

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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