Birmingham, Alabama Mar 10, 2023 (Issuewire.com) - Viceroy Research and Fraser Perring is being reported for Market manipulation and Wire fraud on Medical Properties Trust (MPW) to the SEC in the US, ASIC in Australia, FCA in Great Britain
From the whistleblower report: Viceroy Research LLC, 1201 Orange Street, Suite 600, Wilmington, Delaware, 19801 USA (Owner and CEO: Fraser John Perring. Associates Gabriel Bernarde & Aiden Lau.) have been reported for market manipulation (which Viceroy is already convicted of in South Africa) and wire fraud:
With market manipulation (which is evidence-based in this report and its website links), the price of the financial product Medical Properties Trust (NYSE: MPW) has been deliberately reduced for their gain. They have also committed wire fraud when, via computers, Twitter, and social communication platforms, they lured the public into making risky short-selling transactions on false grounds for their gain. The law aims to keep the trade market fair for all participants but the market manipulators have used illegal means (such as spreading false or misleading news about MPW online to be seen by investors) to artificially affect the price. The perpetrators are involved in the market manipulation of MPW that contributed to the erasure of over $6 billion in market capitalization in 2022-2023.
Viceroy and their previous crimes and conviction in South Africa
Since 2019 Viceroy is based in the US and today their market manipulation is directed at US MPW listed on the NYSE. Viceroy has already been convicted and fined for the same crime:
In 2021, the South African Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) fined Viceroy Research LLC and its partners, Aiden Lau, Fraser John Perring, and Gabriel Bernarde, R50 million ($3.5 million fine) for damaging and false remarks that the short-selling firm made about South Africa's Capitec Bank (SA's then fourth-most valuable bank). The remarks triggered a 25% slump in Capitec's share price in January 2018, wiping out almost R10 billion in value.
According to the judgment, Viceroy had an agreement with a hedge fund, Oasis, which made an estimated profit of R82 million amid the panic selling. The share of Viceroy in the profit from short positions taken by Oasis on Capitec was estimated by the authority to be close to $744 482 (R10 million at the time), shared equally among the partners.
The FSCA had concluded that Viceroy made several statements that they ought reasonably to have known were false, misleading, or deceptive. The FSCA said not only did Viceroy not test its assumptions with Capitec or allow the bank to respond to its suspicions, but it refused to correct the misstatements it made about the bank when evidence showed that it was wrong.
In January 2018, Viceroy published a report it said showed that Capitec was "a loan shark" that massively understated its bad debts and went as far as recommending that SA Reserve Bank should immediately place the bank into curatorship.
The FSCA said it carried out the investigation internally but enlisted the help of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to force Viceroy Research to cooperate. It tested all the allegations the short-seller made by going back to analyze the financial statements the 2018 report was based on. FSCA Commissioner Unathi Kamlana said what concerned the FSCA the most was that even when Viceroy was made aware that statements in its report were false, it didn't publish corrections.
Brandon Topham, the FSCA's divisional executive of enforcement, said the regulator did an extensive investigation and review of Viceroy's calculations to see how the company got to the conclusions it did. "It wasn't just the fact that they didn't go and speak to Capitec. There are a lot of other fundamental flaws that we found in their calculation," he said.
Kamlana, on the other hand, said the FSCA's investigation showed that Viceroy published the report to benefit from the profit-sharing arrangement the company had with one of its clients who had taken a short position on Capitec's share.
"So, they had a direct interest in the loss of value of the listed share in question. And, of course, that happened while potentially destroying the value for many investors in the stock, including retirement savings," said Kamlana.
He said that given Capitec's status as a systemically important financial institution in SA, Viceroy's report could have led to systemic issues and financial instability in the country. So, the FSCA saw it fit to send a message to any other institution or analyst who could be thinking of destabilizing SA's financial system that it will come after them.
"So, let this be a lesson or a warning to all the analysts out there … We're going to hold you liable for saying things, even on your blog. If that personal blog is in the public domain and those statements are negligent, we are going to come and hold you accountable," said Topham.
Although Viceroy is not located in SA and doesn't have any assets locally, Kamlana said the regulator would be able to enforce the fine. Viceroy or its partners had to pay the fine within 30 days – but it never got paid because FSCA didn't have jurisdiction to impose it, according to The Financial Services Tribunal in November 2022.
So Viceroy and the hedgefund Oasis robbed the bank in South Africa, took the money, and were convicted of the crime – but in the end, South Africa could not impose the fines….
It's like Viceroy is the one shouting "hands up - this is a robbery" and the hedge fund Oasis is the one there to steal depositors' money from the coffers and drive the getaway car. Then they share the loot, like hyenas feasting on a carcass, and avoid paying a fine for fleeing with the loot across the border.
The SEC has both the opportunity and responsibility to act against Viceroy as the company has been a registered company in Delaware since 2019 and they have carried out market manipulation on the American company MPW which owns 444 hospitals in 10 countries. That is, the crime was committed in the United States by a company from the United States. Viceroy has made money in the same way in the case of MPW as in the case of Capitec for which they have already been convicted. Thus, the modus operandi is for you at the SEC, use the blueprint and investigative method found in the criminal case from South Africa, which you have already helped the South Africans with.
Viceroy and Fraser John Perring
Quote by The Foundation for Financial Journalism, Roddy Boyd: "But as revealed by a seven-month investigation by the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation, Perring is a charlatan of the first order, with a brazen multiyear record of personal and professional deception.”
Fraser Perring is a former social worker who was fired in 2014. Following a hearing by the Health and Care Professions Council in the UK, Perring was found guilty of misconduct and dishonesty in trying to cover up this misconduct. Perring worked as a child welfare officer at Lincolnshire County Council and failed to contact a foster child's "extended family" to arrange alternative care.
The tribunal service’s decision: Perring’s “response shows that there is a complete denial of the serious issues that have been proven against him and that he has shown no insight whatsoever. Instead, he sought to blame others, and the management culture and has avoided dealing with the issues.” Perring insisted that he made three phone calls to the child’s relatives, and sent them April 17, 2012, letter that discussed the adoption recommendation. The investigators, however, concluded otherwise. Records on the council’s server showed that the letter Perring claimed to have sent in April had been created on June 20, 2012. And phone records showed that Perring had not called the family from either his mobile or office phone.
Born August 5, 1973, Fraser Perring spent his early years on his parent's pig farm in Cornwall.
He worked as a pub worker and a chef. Training in finance? "No, I'm self-taught." When an English-fired social-worker does "financial analyses", it is difficult to distinguish falsifications, errors due to financial ignorance, and how much is due to a hatred of the society that fired him.
Perring's assistants Bernarde and Lau live in Australia and were between 22 and 23 years old when Viceroy was launched.
Viceroy does not have access to confidential documents and business contracts of defamed companies - but reads publicly available financial information and mixes it into a Molotov cocktail of innuendo and falsehoods. McVeigh blasted buildings with fertilizer and diesel. Viceroy blows up hospitals financially with market manipulation.
Viceroy has also been scrutinized by German prosecutors in 2018 after their report triggered a sharp price drop in ProSiebenSat 1 Media. "The Munich prosecutor's office said it was working closely with market regulator Bafin, which has said that Viceroy breached securities law by publishing the report without prior notification." (www.reuters.com/article/us-prosieben-media-accounts-idUSKCN1GR165)
There should be no need to make a Netflix documentary like The GameStop Saga afterward. Wouldn't it be better if the SEC intervened and prevented an ongoing market manipulation before companies fail and the market manipulators leave carcasses in their wake?
Economic terrorism – short sellers become market manipulators
If a group of short sellers first short shares in a movie theater chain and then sit down in various movie theaters, start smoke machines, and shout with shrill voices that there is a fire - it does not mean that there is a fire. But people will run out in panic and some will be trampled - while the blanks sit quietly and watch their market manipulation enrich them in real-time as the shares of the cinema chain flash crash.
Allowing the perpetrators behind Viceroy to continue is like watching Jeffrey Epstein as a molester goes from victim to victim. In his case, it was underage girls and children who were the victims and in Viceroy's case, it was, among other things, a bank in South Africa where 55.5 percent (30.3 million people) of the population is living in poverty, while a total of 13.8 million people (25 percent) are experiencing food poverty.
SEC and market manipulation
Example of market manipulation: Conspiracy theories and lies have been poured out about MPW being involved in their client Steward_Health_Care (the largest physician-owned private, for-profit health care network in the US) losing its Malta operations in a lawsuit recently. This is even though MPW has nothing to do with any properties in Malta and Steward itself spun those properties off from the parent company.
You would have to believe that MPW acquired properties, failed to list them in their 10-K where all their properties are listed, collected $0 in rent from these properties, paid no money for these properties, and now somehow has a financial loss when those properties that they never paid for and never collected rent for are taken. On occasion, bad actors will falsify SEC filings. Every time is once too many. Yet usually those bad actors are inflating their numbers to make their earnings look better, not deflating them and hiding the revenue! That MPW has secretly owned the Malta properties for three years without telling anyone defies all logic.
Please SEC, act faster than in the Bernard Madoff case where you were warned time and time again. The suicides and the economic ruin that followed could perhaps have been partly avoided if society had acted earlier. If 444 hospitals and some under construction fall and patients lie in the hallways due to market manipulation that bankrupts the world's second-largest owner of private hospitals - or another pandemic comes and these hospitals cannot help, the handling of this matter will be scrutinized - Forewarned is forearmed.
Martin Shkreli, Turing Pharmaceuticals scorned the media while raising the price of Daraprim by 5500% causing people to die who could not afford the vital medication. Similarly, the market manipulators now scoff and rub their hands with greed as they attack MPW's 444 hospitals.
Links supporting authorization:
http://www.ffj-online.org/2019/11/04/fraser-perring-chronicles-of-deceit-part-one
http://www.ffj-online.org/2019/11/04/fraser-perring-a-short-foray-into-public-service
Media Contact
Whistleblower Report *****@whistleblowerreport.com http://www.ffj-online.org/2019/11/04/fraser-perring-chronicles-of-deceit-part-one
