The German federal chief prosecutor has arrested a suspect of the Borussia Dortmund bus bomb attack and claimed the motive was to profit from a drop in share prices.
A 28-year-old man identified only as Sergei W has been taken into custody following his arrest by a tactical response team in the Tuebingen area on Friday.
He is a dual German-Russian citizen and is to be charged with attempted murder, inflicting serious bodily harm and causing an explosion.
The incident occurred ahead of the first leg of a Champions League quarter-final between the Bundesliga side and Monaco on April 11.
Three explosions occurred as Thomas Tuchel’s team made their way to Signal Iduna Park for the European encounter.
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Dortmund defender Marc Bartra was wounded by the blasts, with a decision taken to delay the fixture by 24 hours.
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Sergei W is said to have purchased 15,000 contracts giving him the right to sell the shares at a pre-determined price.
"The accused bought 15,000 put-options regarding the shares of Borussia Dortmund on April 11," a prosecutor's statement read.
"Those options were running until June 17, 2017 and were bought with the ID of the hotel L'Arrivee (Dortmund's team hotel).
"Someone who buys put-options speculates on the value of shares dropping. It allows the owner of these options to sell his shares until a certain date – in this case June 17 – to sell a fixed amount for a fixed price.
"If Dortmund's shares had dropped in value massively, his profit would have been many times the investment. You could expect a massive drop in values of the shares if players had been injured or even killed during the attack."
The club's CEO, Hans-Joachim Watzke, and president, Reinhard Rauball, released a statement of their own after the arrest, saying: "The investigations by prosecutors and police have been intensive and with high priority. We would like to thank them for that massively and hope that with this suspect the responsible person for that horrible attack on our team and staff has been found.
"We received incredible support over the last days and that gave us much strength."
Left-back Marcel Schmelzer, meanwhile, added: "We hope we will learn all the background information to this attack. For everybody who sat in that bus, this information is important as it makes it easier to deal with it all."