An “inaccurate” report, an “irresponsible” publication. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, cited by the Reuters news agency, was not gentle on Wednesday with a report by two American researchers.
In this document published on December 3, entitled “Trading on terror? » [Boursicoter sur le terrorisme], Robert Jackson and Joshua Mitts, law professors at New York University and Columbia, claim to have detected a level of suspicious stock market activity on October 2, five days before the Hamas attack on Israel. An activity which has proven lucrative for speculators, note the authors, who announce a profit of 3.2 billion shekels, the Israeli currency, or around 800 million euros.
The authors do not directly point the finger at Hamas, but several media outlets picked up the report, making a link with the Islamist movement.
FAKE OFF
The researchers did not use the correct unit in their report, noted Yaniv Pagot, head of trading at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, to the Israeli newspaper The Globe. The transactions in question are in fact made in arogot, the equivalent of centimes, and not in shekels, the equivalent of euros. The estimated benefit announced by the researchers must therefore be divided by a hundred: it must no longer be estimated in billions of shekels, but in millions. An error that the researchers corrected in a second version of their report available online.
Additionally, “there was nothing unusual about the short positions on the stock market in the two months preceding the attack,” has explained to Reuters the same Yaniv Pagot. Israel Securities Authority, Israel’s financial market regulator, told the US news agency that “in the days leading up to the Hamas terrorist attack, no significant anomalies in transactions that would have required further investigation were identified.” been detected.”
Yaniv Pagot also dismisses the newspaper The Globe the hypothesis of Hamas insider trading or a crime committed via shell companies: “If we assume that someone made a huge short sale of a stock, the person who made that sale short would be completely transparent to the local regulator because it must sign a share loan agreement with a TASE member [la bourse de Tel Aviv ».
Le spécialiste continue : « Un membre du Hamas ou une société de paille agissant en son nom signerait-il un accord de prêt d’actions sur le TASE ? Même si quelqu’un veut emprunter des actions d’une valeur de 500 millions de NIS, il doit s’identifier auprès d’une banque et obtenir un cadre de crédit. La banque a donc besoin d’informations sur les personnes impliquées. Il y a des questions comme le blanchiment d’argent, etc. En d’autres termes, un tel scénario n’est pas envisageable. »
Le Financial Times évoque une autre option pour expliquer le volume d’échanges le 2 octobre : ce jour correspond au premier jour de bourse du trimestre. Pour le quotidien spécialisé, il se pourrait que les mouvements observés soient la décision d’un fonds d’investissement, qui aurait décidé de modifier ses positions le jour de l’ouverture. Une seconde hypothèse qui reste à confirmer, mais qui est bien éloignée du scénario du délit d’initié.