Good News & Bad News, page-25126

Another take on the curse of shorters...

It seems a month can’t go by without a short seller putting the kibosh on a lithium stock.Back in 2021 we had J Capital go toe to toe in a losing battle with geothermal lithium play Vulcan Energy (ASX:VUL), though the German lithium darling is flying far lower than it was before the vehicle of former Labor Party candidate Tim Murray tried to sink the boot in.The whole thing eventually cost Murray an apology and a fair degree of face. Potentially more embarrassing was J’s call that it was LONG on Firefinch (ASX:FFX).The company fell into trouble not long after at the Morila gold mine in Mali and while spin out Leo Lithium (ASX:LLL) continues to progress its previous stake at the Goulamina lithium mine it would be hard not to call that particular report a disaster.Now US short seller Blue Orca Capital has emerged on the radar of ASX lithium investors with an attempted takedown of lithium brethren Piedmont (ASXLL) and Atlantic Lithium (ASX:A11).To summarise, Blue Orca claims the Ewoyaa lithium project in Ghana, where Piedmont expects to be receiving spodumene concentrate for a Tennessee lithium plant from 2025, is unlikely to ratified.It claims “tens of millions” of dollars (actually $730,000 plus a future production royalty) were paid to a company owned by the son of a prominent Ghanaian Asiedu Nketiah, known colloquially as General Mosquito, during the acquisition of the mine.The accusations of “corruption” in the pick-up of the mineral rights have sent Piedmont, a roughly $1.7b US and ASX-listed company and Atlantic, a recent entrant into the All Ordinaries index, both into a trading halt to respond to the Blue Orca report.Piedmont, was one of the winners of conditional funding from a major critical minerals grants program in the US last year, with the Biden Administration expected to tip US$141.7m into the US$600m Tennessee lithium hydroxide plant in McMinn County.It is also a part owner and offtaker of Sayona Mining’s (ASX:SYA) North American Lithium project in Quebec, Canada, which produced first concentrate this week.