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Analysts tracking transactions leading up to financial tsunami By Gordon Thomas LONDON -- Financial analysts for the MI6 British intelligence agency urgently are checking hedge funds, the gamblers of the financial world, to determine whether Osama bin Laden's "market manipulators" gave them orders to sell al-Qaida shares in Lehman Brothers and AIG, which launched the financial tsunami that has swept the world.
The secret intelligence service has recruited some of the world's top financial experts to follow the money trail after it emerged al-Qaida had invested in the stock market. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned the International Monetary Fund in Washington "the financial threat al-Qaida poses is of ultimate seriousness and it is of prime importance to root out their penetration of the financial world." The MI6 experts believe the final link in the money trail into Wall Street and the City of London was forged by the hedge funds. The al-Qaida money was first placed in what are described by MI6 as "surrogate accounts" in banks as far apart as Malta, Warsaw, Singapore and Saudi Arabia. The funds then were transferred to selected hedge funds for investing in banks like Lehman Brothers. The funds are in the name of what the CIA has called "clean skin" operations. "Hedge funds have a cavalier, ask-few-questions approach and often do not check too closely where the funds they are handling come from. Even more than the major banks, they are driven simply by making high profits," said Brian McAdam, an expert on terrorist funding. Hedge funds provide the perfect open door to the stock market for al-Qaida. U.S. Treasury agents, working closely with MI6 and other intelligence services, believe al-Qaida has invested billions of dollars in the banking giants of Wall Street and the City of London. The money to invest originally came from al-Qaida's huge profits from the Afghanistan drug industry. "Hedge funds are classic gamblers. They buy stock in a company and slowly sell it off to give the impression that everyone is selling. This can lead to a collapse in confidence in that company's shares and soon the stock is in freefall," said Charlie Elphicke at the City of London Centre for Policy Studies. Last year, hedge funds managed an estimated $6 trillion of investments. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, hundreds of intelligence officers are working to unravel the complicated structure which gave al-Qaida a firm foothold in the world's leading financial markets. Two years ago, the London-based financial journal "International Currency Review" – whose subscribers include the World Bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and the Bank of England – predicted: "Al-Qaida will continue to manipulate its huge stock market holdings. But working through its well-placed surrogates, tracking their investments will remain a monumental task." Gordon Thomas is the author of a new edition of Gideon's Spies: The Inside Story of Israel's Legendary Secret Service The Mossad, by JR Books of London and available on Amazon Books. Source: G2 BULLETIN
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