Silverstein's Quick Profits From 9/11
Mr Silverstein, who leased the downtown site destroyed on September
11, 2001, claims Allianz still owes him $US553 million and that a second
insurer, Britain's Royal & Sun Alliance, owes him $US250 million.
At the end of two trials in 2004, a federal court decided that the
insurers owed a maximum of $4.6 billion, more than the $3.5 billion term
of the insurance policy. Silverstein had originally claimed $7 billion,
attempting to prove that the crashing of the two planes into two towers
constituted two separate events. The two sides have been locked in a
grueling appraisal process to determine exactly how much of the $4.6
billion must be paid out.
The German insurer Allianz spokeswoman said the insurer had already
paid almost $US2 billion ($A2.56 billion) in claims from the World Trade
Center disaster, settling with all its policy holders except for
Silverstein and the Port Authority who Allianz almost $US550 million
($A704.72 million)
Silverstein is determined to rake in every last penny possible from
9/11 and has already secured billions from other insurers without a
blink of an eye over the fact that he leased the property just six weeks
before the attacks and has since been caught in an admission that he
ordered at least one of the buildings, WTC 7, "pulled" on 9/11.
In February of 2002 Silverstein Properties won $861 million from
Industrial Risk Insurers to rebuild on the site of WTC 7. Silverstein
Properties' estimated investment in WTC 7 was $386 million. This
building's collapse alone resulted in a profit of about $500 million.
In May 2005 we carried a report from press release website PR Web
which highlighted a proposal by a small shareholder to withhold approval
from the Board of Directors for failure to investigate signs of
insurance fraud on 9/11 had been published on the website of the Allianz
Group in preparation for its May 4th annual meeting.
The report stated:
Allianz Group published a shareholder proposal on April 20th faulting
management for ignoring signs of insurance fraud on 9/11/2001. Allianz
carried a significant portion of the insurance coverage on the WTC, and
stands to pay a corresponding portion of the $3.5 billion payout
currently being litigated in New York. In his proposal, shareholder John
Leonard, a California native and a publisher of books on 9/11, pointed
to reports that building WTC 7 apparently collapsed by demolition, and
for no plausible reason related to the 9/11 attacks. Management replied
that it relied on official US government reports which made no mention
of such evidence.
The Allianz Group is incorporated in Germany and has approximately
570,000 shareholders. Under German Stock Companies law, publicly held
companies are required to publish shareholder proposals that meet
certain criteria.
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