National Court Judge José Luis Calama admitted an anti-corruption prosecutor’s complaint to investigate Gotham City, the company specializing in downside bets against companies, for allegedly disclosing “biased and misleading information” to the market financial on the credibility of Grifols to encourage its investors to sell the shares of this pharmaceutical company. And, therefore, cause a drop in price that would generate a profit for both Gotham and General Industrial Partners LLP (GIP), denounced the other company.
The facts are exposed in a complaint filed by the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office for a possible crime against the market and consumers. The order includes messages published by Gotham between January 8 and 9 on the social network Twitter, currently X, which included a report on Grifols radically concluding that the pharmaceutical company’s shares were worth 0 euros. Following this report, on the same day, January 9, Grifols shares reached losses of 3,814 million euros before the close of the session.
In this same document, adds the judge, Gotham indicated that it is a subsidiary of General Industrial Partners LP and that it maintained a “sell” position in Grifols, greater than 0.5% of the share capital. After the release of the Gotham report, his short position was drastically 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 order, represented for GIP a capital gain of more than 9.4 million euros.
The magistrate considers that the conditions are met to investigate the crime linked to the market and consumers because it is “a dissemination of news or rumors about a commercial company – in this case Grifols – which would contain data totally or partially false economic data with the potential to modify or preserve the stock price of the said company, and, in addition, the losses and profits arising in the context of the exploitation of the false data disseminated.
The first measures with which the judge agrees are to require the CNMV to present in Spanish all the documents it has sent 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, including Daniel Yu and Cyrus de Weck, and GIP, as well as the two companies denounced.
Calama offers Grifols the opportunity to present herself as injured and asks her to present a copy of the lawsuit she filed for these events in the District Court of New York, as well as its extension, which the magistrate heard about in 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.
