[Anchor]
Usually, a company's stock price tends to rise when clinical trial approval is granted. However, right after Genencell's clinical trial approval, Sejong Medical, its largest shareholder, saw its stock price plunge by half as a flood of massive sell-offs hit the market. While small shareholders suffered heavy losses, someone managed to pocket 18.2 billion won in profits.
Here is the report from reporter Kim Hye-min.
[Reporter]
Back in July 2021, an investment firm named Time Investment and four investment associations acquired a stake of over 50% in the medical device company Sejong Medical.
Sejong Medical's stock price, which had been in the 3,000 won range, began to climb from this point on.
On October 19, Sejong Medical invested 11.3 billion won to become the largest shareholder of Genencell.
A week later, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety approved Genencell's clinical trial plan.
However, Sejong Medical's stock price began to plummet.
This was because three of the investment associations that had entered three months prior—ranking as the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th largest shareholders—dumped all their shares in just two days.
The stock plunged for five consecutive trading sessions, dropping to 3,825 won.
From buying to selling in just three months, they walked away with 18.2 billion won in profits.
Ultimately, it turned out that Genencell was used as material to artificially boost Sejong Medical's stock price.
Interestingly, a similar incident surrounding Genencell had previously occurred in September 2020.
A company called Gold Pacific formed a consortium with Genencell to develop a candidate substance for a COVID-19 treatment, causing its stock price to more than double because it was associated with the theme.
The same entities appeared consecutively here.
Time Investment, a major shareholder of Sejong Medical, had also invested in Gold Pacific to reap 700 million won in profits. Meanwhile, Byron had invested in Gold Pacific's convertible bonds, and an internal director of Gold Pacific became a member of one of Sejong Medical's investment associations.
In both 2020 and 2021, the same investment firms and individuals utilized Genencell's clinical trial approvals as a tool to pump up stock prices.
Their specific identities and whether actual stock manipulation took place have not yet been uncovered.
Since then, Sejong Medical even received a decision for delisting in June of this year, and Gold Pacific's stock price has also nosedived, trading around the 1,000 won mark.
[Individual A / Small shareholder of Sejong Medical: We invested looking at the company's future, but we suffered massive damages because of stock-manipulating forces that inflated the stock price with promotional material to pocket the gains....]
The number of small shareholders who suffered losses due to the delisting of Sejong Medical reaches 30,000.
(Video Editing: Kim Jun-hee, Design: Park Taeyoung and Park Cheon-woong)
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