Austria's RBI says Grizzly take on business contains wrong, misleading statements

Sept 17 (Reuters) - Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International said on Thursday that it had seen a number of factually wrong and misleading statements in an initial review of comments by Grizzly Research on risks connected to RBI's Russia business.

"We stand by the strength of our compliance systems, which have been reviewed many times," the bank said after the short seller said it had taken a short position on RBI.

Grizzly Research said in a report that its findings point towards "a previously unknown dependence of RBI on its Russia business" and raise questions about RBI's role in circumventing sanctions that extends to Iran and North Korea.

RBI initially declined to comment further on the Grizzly report.

The bank's shares were down 9% at 0745 GMT.

(Reporting by Linda Pasquini, additional reporting by Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich, editing by Thomas Seythal, Kirsten Donovan)