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GLOBAL RESEARCH (CANADA) : FEATURE ARTICLE
13 March 2004
FINANCIAL BONANZA BEHIND THE 9/11
TRAGEDY
WHO ARE THE FINANCIAL ACTORS BEHIND THE WTC?
by Michel
Chossudovsky
www.globalresearch.ca 12 March 2004
The URL
of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO403B.html
On October 17, 2000, eleven months before 9/11, Blackstone
Real Estate Advisors, of The Blackstone Group, L.P, purchased, from Teachers
Insurance and Annuity Association, the participating mortgage secured by World
Trade Center, Building 7.1
April 26, 2001 the Port Authority leased the
WTC for 99 years to Silverstein Properties and Westfield America Inc.
The transaction was authorized by Port Authority Chairman Lewis M.
Eisenberg.
This transfer from the New York and New Jersey Port
Authority was tantamount to the privatization of the WTC Complex. The official
press release described it as "the richest real estate prize in New York City
history". The retail space underneath the complex was leased to Westfield
America Inc.2
On 24 July 2001, 6 weeks prior to 9/11 Silverstein took
control of the lease of the WTC following the Port Authority decision on April
26.
Silverstein and Frank Lowy, CEO of Westefield Inc. took control of
the 10.6 million-square-foot WTC complex. "Lowy leased the shopping concourse
called the Mall at the WTC, which comprised about 427,000 square feet of
retail space."3
Explicitly included in the agreement was that
Silverstein and Westfield "were given the right to rebuild the structures if
they were destroyed". 4
In this transaction, Silverstein signed a
rental contract for the WTC over 99 years amounting to 3,2 billion dollars in
installments to be made to the Port Authority: 800 million covered fees
including a down payment of the order of 100 million dollars. Of this amount,
Silverstein put in 14 million dollars of his own money. The annual payment on
the lease was of the order of 115 million dollars.5
In the wake of the
WTC attacks, Silverstein is suing for some $7.1 billion in insurance money,
double the amount of the value of the 99 year lease.6
Silverstein
Properties Inc. is a Manhattan-based real estate development and investment
firm that owns, manages, and has developed more than 20 million square feet of
office, residential and retail space.
Westfield America, Inc. is
controlled by the Australian based Lowy family with major interests in
shopping centres. The CEO of Westfield is Australian businessman Frank
Lowy.
The Blackstone Group, a private investment bank with offices in
New York and London, was founded in 1985 by its Chairman, Peter G. Peterson,
and its President and CEO, Stephen A. Schwarzman.
In addition to its
Real Estate activities, the Blackstone Group's core businesses include Mergers
and Acquisitions Advisory, Restructuring and Reorganization Advisory, Private
Equity Investing, Private Mezzanine Investing, and Liquid Alternative Asset
Investing.7
Blackstone chairman Peter G. Petersen is also Chairman of
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Chairman of the board of the Council
on Foreign Relations (CFR). His partner Stephen A. Schwarzman is also a member
of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Peter G. Petersen is also named in
widow Ellen Mariani’s widow civil RICO suit filed against. George W. Bush, et
al.
Kissinger McLarty Associates, which is Henry Kissinger’s
consulting firm has a "strategic alliance" with the Blackstone Group "which is
designed to help provide financial advisory services to corporations seeking
high-level strategic advice." (www.blackstone.com)
.
* *
*
For details on the insurance claims pertaining to the WTC, see
Centre for Research on Globalization, The WTC Towers Collapse: an Enormous
Insurance Scam (selected articles), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/WTC312A.html , 19
December 2003
NOTES
1 Business Wire, 17 October
2000
2. See Paul Goldberger in The New Yorker, May 20, 2002.
3
C. Bollyn, "Did Rupert Murdoch Have Prior Knowledge of 9/11?" Centre for
Research on Globalization, globalresearch.ca, 20 October 2003.
4.
Goldberger, op cit
5, Associated Press, 22 November 2003. See also Die
Welt, Berlin, Oct 11, 2001.
6. Alison Frankel, The American Lawyer,
Sept 3 2002
7 Business Wire, op
cit
*
* *
Michel Chossudovsky is the
author of WAR AND GLOBALISATION, THE TRUTH BEHIND SEPTEMBER 11, Global
Outlook, 2002,
for details click: http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html
The
URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO403B.html
This article was published in Issue 7 of Global Outlook, Spring
2004.
http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/GOISSUE7.html
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Copyright M CHOSSUDOVSKY 2004.
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