The pharmaceutical group Grifols has filed a lawsuit in the United States for libel and market manipulation against the vulture fund Gotham City Research, its top managers, Daniel Yu and Cyrus de Weck, and the hedge fund through which it operates, General Industrial Partners .

The Catalan group, which has lost 32% of its value on the stock market due to the report of this fund that accused it of falsifying the accounts, is asking the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York that the defendants pay him to recover “the financial and reputational damages caused to the company and its interested parties”. Shareholders have lost more than 3,000 million euros with the fall in the stock market.

Grifols calls Gotham City and its managers “predatory short sellers” who profit illicitly from “manipulative short selling and distortion schemes.” According to the group, “unlike other short sellers, the defendants crossed the line in their attack on Grifols because they deliberately made false and misleading statements for a single unlawful purpose: to manipulate the value of Grifols stock to to their own monetary benefit”.

Grifols also asks the court to apply “precautionary measures so that the defendants retract and do not persist in their actions”, in addition to the financial recovery. The complaint alleges that the fund and its managers “obtained a substantial short position in Grifols by publishing and subsequently distributing a report containing falsehoods about Grifols’ accounting, communications, finances and integrity,” which generated them a significant benefit.

The Gotham report also sent short bets from other sellers soaring. According to data provided by the company to Nasdaq, in the second week of January short positions doubled to 8.4 million shares and became wildly speculative: investors held their position only 1.18 days (28 hours), when previously they had been able to keep it open for up to 16 days.

The Grifols legal team, which runs the Osborne law firm

Gotham itself has recognized the weakness of its position. Thus, one day after publishing the report, the content changed and it no longer accuses Grifols of hiding the loans it has granted to companies linked to the family, but only of “offering limited information” on these credits. In this way, Gotham recognizes that the answer that Grifols gave to the CNMV is true.

Yesterday the share on the stock market rose again, by 1.7%, to 9.56 euros; is an 18% recovery from the lows it marked after the Gotham attack. The company’s shares rose more than 4% on Wall Street when the lawsuit became known,