The president of TC (Traders Club), Pedro Albuquerque, accuses his competitor Empiricus of being the author of an apocryphal video that circulates on the internet with insinuations that his company commits crimes against the financial market. He claims that Empiricus manipulates the capital markets with the aim of destroying his company and making a profit.
Distributed in WhatsApp groups on June 28, the video shows a woman with clown makeup saying that the TC manipulates shares traded on the Stock Exchange. In the end, she says that “there’s a lot more to come”. Then, without presenting evidence, she talks about 17 alleged cases of harassment and asks if it’s true that there was a gang rape of a former employee inside the company’s headquarters. According to the TC, the insinuations are lies.
The company filed a request for an investigation with the Federal Police into the authorship of the video on July 8. The document does not directly accuse Empiricus, stating that an October last year report produced by the competitor, recommending the sale of TC shares, “appears to have served as a backdrop” for the video.
As a competitor, Empiricus would be an interested party in the fall of TC’s shares, says Albuquerque. It is based on this context that the TC presented on June 29, to the Court of Justice of São Paulo, a judicial request for Empiricus to remove the video from the internet, if it is responsible for the piece.
Sought by the report, Empiricus said it would not comment.
Albuquerque claims to have subsequently received files obtained from an anonymous source through its investor relations channel that indicate Empiricus’ involvement in the video, and which will still be included in the investigation request filed.
The president of the TC showed excerpts of this material to the Sheet. The report cannot confirm the authenticity.
According to Albuquerque, these files indicate that Empiricus planned to reconcile the release of a second video with a million-dollar bet on the fall of TC shares.
“A very serious material, in which it is said that the main partners of Empiricus organized, were combining, the dissemination of the second video, including with a trading table, which we believe is Vitreo, an Empiricus company that has a massive bet against our company, organizing the disclosure and how they would earn profits”, says Albuquerque.
According to data collected by TC through its Economatica system, funds from the brokerage firm Vitreo led bets against Traders Club shares until March 2022, the latest information available, maintaining a position of approximately R$30 million against the company.
In the same way that it is possible to buy a stock based on the belief that it will appreciate, it is also feasible to carry out an operation that pays profits if the asset falls. This is what the market calls short selling or short selling. The practice is cool.
What you cannot do is to purposely induce investors to sell the stock you bet against in order to make a profit. This is what Albuquerque accuses Empiricus of.
“The fact is that there is a clear intention, with the evidence that we are presenting, of a crime of manipulation to make a profit. There is a financial intention. A massive bet against the TC”, says Albuquerque.
The TC also considers that Empiricus seeks to destroy a competitor to facilitate compliance with a performance clause included in the sale of Empiricus to BTG Pactual last year.
From the closing of the market on June 27, the day before the video began to circulate, until this Monday (25), Traders Club shares traded on the Exchange plummeted 45%.
The fall represented a loss of approximately BRL 1 billion in market value for the TC, currently valued at around BRL 1.1 billion.
In the same period, the Ibovespa reference index dropped 0.49%, while the indicator for the small cap portfolio –companies with lower market value, of which TC is a part– dropped 1.70%.
When contacted by Folha, BTG replied that it would not comment.
Empiricus and TC are vying for subscribers to their financial analysis and education services for individuals, a segment of the Exchange that grew 56% and reached 5 million participants in 2021, but which is now going through a crisis due to the stock market crash caused by the interest rate hike.
(Collaborated by Marcelo Azevedo)
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
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