National Court judge José Luis Calama admitted a complaint from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office to investigate Gotham Cityto General Industrial Partners LLP (GIP) and several of its directors for allegedly disclose biased and misleading information about the credibility of Grifols in the financial market.
With this, and as explained by the National Court in a press release, the investment company intended “encourage its investors to sell the shares of this pharmaceutical company causing a drop in prices which would generate a profit for the two companies denounced.
Concretely, the magistrate considers that an offense qualified in article 284.1.2 of the Penal Code could have been committed, which punishes “anyone directly or indirectly or by a means of communication, by the Internet or by the use of communication technologies. communication or information or by any other means, disseminate information or rumors or transmit false or misleading signals about people or companies. Knowingly offering totally or partially false economic data in order to modify or preserve the quoted price of a financial instrument.
In the analyzed case, the car collects messages published by Gotham between January 8 and 9 on the social network Twittercurrently X.
These messages included a report on Grifols which radically concluded that The shares of the pharmaceutical company were worth 0 euros. After the publication of the said document, “on the same day, January 9, Grifols shares reached losses of 3,814 million euros“, recalls the National Court.
In this same document, adds the judge, Gotham indicated that it is a subsidiary of General Industrial Partners LP and that it maintained a short position on Grifols, greater than 0.5% of its capital. After the release of the Gotham report, the bearish bet was reduced to 0.06%.
Operating in “short positions”, explains Calama, consists of selling shares that you do not own and which have been borrowed, to resell them advantageously, then having to buy them to return the borrowed shares.
The profit lies in the difference between the sale price of the shares and the price of purchasing the shares (or repurchasing what was sold).
This operation, indicates the car, This represents a capital gain of more than 9.4 million euros for General Industrial Partners.
Search Daniel Yu
The magistrate considers that the conditions are met to investigate the offense linked to the market and consumers because it is “a dissemination of news or rumors about a commercial company, in this case Grifols SA, which would contain totally or partially false economic data with a potential to modify or preserve the stock price of the said company, and, in addition, the losses and profits incurred in the context of the exploitation of the false data disseminated.
The first measures on which the judge agrees consist of requiring the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) to present all the documents it has transmitted to the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office.
Furthermore, the magistrate orders the Judicial Police of the National Court to locate the addresses of the five defendants responsible for Gotham, among them its founder, Daniel Yu, and one of its partners, Cyrus of Weckand GIP, as well as the two companies denounced.
Calama offers Grifols the chance to report injured and asks him to present a copy of the lawsuit he filed for these events before the District Court of New York, as well as the extension thereof, of which the magistrate became aware through the media.
Also ask Grifols if it has filed a complaint regarding these events with the US and UK agencies responsible for overseeing the securities and financial markets of those countries.
