Police arrested a man on suspicion he attacked the bus of German soccer team Borussia Dortmund GmbH last week, hoping to profit from a slump in the publicly traded club’s share price.
The 28-year-old man, who has both German and Russian citizenship, was apprehended in the southern city of Tuebingen on Friday, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement, Bloomberg reported.
On the day of the April 11 attack in the team’s home city of Dortmund, he bought 15,000 put options on Borussia Dortmund shares betting they would drop sharply after the attack.
A player was injured following three bomb explosions near the team’s bus as it headed to a Champions League match against AS Monaco. The suspect, identified only as Sergei W., is being investigated for attempted murder, causing an explosion and grave assault.
The man had booked a room in the same hotel as the soccer team overlooking the site of the attack. He bought put options online via the IP address of the hotel, the prosecutor’s office said.
Put options grant its owner the right to sell shares at a fixed price in the future. The man had taken a consumer loan to finance the transaction, according to the statement.
"In case of a massive slump in Borussia Dortmund’s stock, the profit would have been a multiple of the invested money," the prosecutor’s office said. "A massive share drop would have had to be expected, had a player been gravely injured or even killed as the result of the attack."
According to prosecutors, the man placed three bombs in a hedge on the road that the team bus was due to take to the stadium. The explosives contained metal pins, which after the explosion were found as far as 250 meters (275 yards) away. One pin was found in a head-rest of one of the bus seats, the authorities said.
