The US healthcare real estate company Medical Properties Trust (MPT) has started a defamation lawsuit in a US federal court against short-selling Viceroy Research and its three members over what it says are bogus, fake and fraudulent financial analysis reports linking it to medical company Steward Healthcare International (SHCI) Malta hospitals issue.
\nOne of the biggest real estate medical companies in America, MPT has sued for defamation the Viceroy Research LLC and its members Fraser John Perring, Gabriel Bernarde and Aidan Lau following the short-selling Viceroy Research \u201crepeatedly publishing baseless allegations to drive down the company\u2019s stock price\u201d.
\nMPT maintains in its scathing filing that Viceroy Research has been involved in a conspiracy against the company to make money by spreading false news and therefore the lawsuit seeks permanent injunctive relief, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, compensatory and punitive damages from Viceroy for defamation, civil conspiracy, tortious interference, private nuisance, and unjust enrichment.
\nMPT, which leases hospital property to medical groups in the United States, has told the District Court of Alabama that Viceroy Research deliberately and maliciously lied in its reports \u201cabout its connections to Steward\u201d in Malta for nefarious purposes and to \u201cprop up its short attack\u201d against the company by claiming it is deliberately concealing secret ownership in Steward-connected hospitals in Malta. MPT has denied any links in its legal claim filed in the state of Alabama where MPT headquarters are based.
\n\u201cThese are falsehoods, ginned up to try to undercut investor and public confidence in MPT and harm the company,\u201d says MTP said in court filings, describing Viceroy Research\u2019s reports as completely false and a clear-cut case of market manipulation aimed at driving down MPT\u2019s share price in a clear case of short-selling exercise.
\nMPT says in its claim that Viceroy Research and its team \u2013 Fraser John Perring, Gabriel Bernarde, and Aidan Lau \u2013 are \u201cin the business of mounting serial short-and-distort attacks against public companies\u201d and that \u201cMPT is their latest victim\u201d as MPT has been linked by them with the Malta deal, maliciously and falsely, in a bid to damage its share price and make a short-selling profit off what it says was bogus research it published.
\nIn the court filing, MPT says that Viceroy follows a playbook for such malicious attacks: \u201cThe playbook for these attacks is simple: Take a short position in a stock or partner with someone who has one, publish false \u2018research\u2019 critical of the target company, amplify the false claims on social media, and then reap a profit\u2014 either directly, from the stock price drop you bet on and then caused, or indirectly, by collecting payments from other market players who profited on the drop.\u201d
\nThe lawsuit says \u201cthis action arises from a campaign to defame, injure, and drive down the stock price of MPT, one of Alabama\u2019s largest public companies and its largest real estate investment trust (\u201cREIT\u201d).
\nMPT lawsuit says Viceroy Research\u2019s Fraser Perring\u2014a self-proclaimed \u201cGrand Poobah\u201d of short-sellers \u2014 \u201centered the distortion game after British regulators revoked his social work license upon finding that he had lied and fabricated evidence. Perring founded Viceroy with Bernarde and Lau in 2016, and the firm has become notorious for short-and-distort schemes. In 2021, for example, a South African regulator fined Viceroy\u2019s members millions of dollars for spreading false and misleading claims about a South African bank on behalf of a hedge fund that was trying to drive down the bank\u2019s stock price. Defendants escaped justice, however, when a tribunal vacated the penalty for a jurisdictional defect.\u201d
\nThe claim says: \u201cShort-selling is not illegal in the United States, and criticism of public companies is integral to our capital markets. Nor is it illegal to couple short-selling with criticism of a target company, provided the speaker does not deliberately or recklessly misrepresent facts for profit. But Viceroy does not play by the rules.\u201d
\nMPT has alleged that for months, Viceroy Research, its three members and their cohorts have been spreading malicious falsehoods about MP and in late January 2023 announced it held a short position in MPT and simultaneously published the first of 14 \u201creports\u201d on the Company in a steady stream.
\nThe lawsuit says Viceroy Research made false accusations that MPT purportedly engages in illegal \u201cround-trip\u201d transactions by \u201coverpaying\u201d owners of hospital properties and leasing those properties back to the sellers and that MPT executives were engaging in \u201cfraud\u201d and juicing their own compensation. At the same time, the lawsuit says, Viceroy, Fraser and others started a Twitter campaign using the hashtags \u201c#fraud\u201d and \u201c#Ponzi scheme\u201d\u2014 urging investors to dump MPT stock, accusing MPT of \u201cinvolvement in #Corruption\u201d and \u201cscamming investors,\u201d and promising his followers that MPT\u2019s \u201cemployees will go to prison.\u201d
\nMPT says that these allegations by Viceroy Research, Fraser John Perring, Gabriel Bernarde and Aidan Lau are \u201cmalicious fiction, concocted to manipulate the market and to drive profits from short-selling. As outrageous as they are, Defendants\u2019 falsehoods have influenced the market and caused serious harm to MPT. Since Viceroy began its attacks, MPT\u2019s stock price is down over 35 percent, a potential counterparty has pulled away from a commercial transaction, and MPT has had to increase physical security at its Birmingham headquarters. Several analysts who follow MPT have observed the impact that the short attack has had on the stock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US healthcare real estate company Medical Properties Trust (MPT) has started a defamation lawsuit in a US federal court against short-selling Viceroy Research and its three members over what it says are bogus, fake and fraudulent financial analysis reports linking it to medical company Steward Healthcare International (SHCI) Malta hospitals issue. One of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327038,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n