Pershing Squares Calls On Herbalife CEO To Release Incriminating Video

Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P is calling on Herbalife Ltd.

to make good on its commitment to transparency. The New York Post published an article (http://nypost.com/2015/06/25/video-reveals-herbalife-boss-saw-pyramiding-signs-early-on/) on Thursday night revealing that it had obtained a copy of an incriminating video of Herbalife CEO Michael Johnson, who was a Disney

executive at the time. The tape, according to the Post, shows Johnson claiming that Herbalife had been involved in "pyramiding." "Distributors had sometimes engaged in ‘false promises, claims, in hopes for product, for money, for recruiting, for customers, for pyramiding.'" Pershing Square published an open letter today in which it "[urged] that [Johnson] release the 71-minute video and any similar materials in [its] possession or control." "Every year," the letter went on, "millions of hopeful entrepreneurs – the great majority of them with very little money – sign up as Herbalife distributors without meaningful information on the risks they face and the massive failure rate of people just like them." Ackman has a history (http://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2015/04/13/bill-ackman-herbalife-criminal-lawyers-student-loans-bubble/) with Herbalife. He called the company a "pyramid scheme" and a "criminal enterprise" in 2013. "I think senior management will go to jail," he said at the time. Herbalife was trading down about 2 percent today on news of the video.