Exclusive interview: Muddy Waters’ Carson Block on Solutions 30

We have secured an exclusive interview with the head of Muddy Waters Capital. Carson Block, one of the most famous short sellers on Wall Street, is making headlines everywhere, especially in Europe with the Ströer and Casino cases, and more recently by attacking the French company Solutions 30.

Short seller but above all activist, his strategy consists in taking short positions before publicly denouncing bad accounting, financial and governance practices, but also fraud.

The goal is to destabilize targets to cash in on a capital gain. But accusations must be based on facts, because the threat of a conviction for defamation is never far away.

In this interview, Carson Block confides on the elements that led him to take a short position on the Solutions 30 stock in May 2019 and comments on the case’s latest events. He does not mince his words: China and now Europe are, according to him, fertile grounds for accounting dysfunctions, while auditors get their fair share of criticism. He persists in his accusations about Solutions 30.

You will find below the best bits of our interview. The full version, one hour and twenty minutes long, will be available this Friday. It will allow you to better understand the character, how Muddy Waters find targets and will also give you a broader view on the S30 case, the outcome of which remains uncertain.

Who is right and who is wrong? It’s for you to decide...

Solutions 30's Right of Reply

"This interview with Carson Block seriously implicates Solutions 30 by biased means of suspicions and peremptory assertions, and without any evidence being advanced.

The company recalls that following the allegations contained in an anonymous report and widely reported by Muddy Waters, its Supervisory Board commissioned two leading independent firms of experts to investigate these very serious accusations. These two auditors concluded unequivocally that there was "no evidence to corroborate the allegations of money laundering, linked to organized crime" after their teams, experienced in this type of investigations, has spent more than 3,000 hours working on it.

Finally, the company recalls that it has filed a complaint against X with the National Financial Prosecutor's Office for market manipulation and dissemination of false or misleading information, and against Carson Block for public defamation."