Report: FBI Investigating Solyndra For Fraud

FBI agents head into one of Solyndra's buildings along Kato Road in Fremont, California, Thursday, September 8, 2011.
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The FBI is investigating the failed solar panel maker Solyndra for potential accounting fraud, according to a new report by Bloomberg.

Bloomberg had few other details, and based its report on an anonymous agency source.

The company filed for bankruptcy protection August 31st after telling lawmakers on Capitol Hill in July that it was growing, and providing them with positive numbers about their revenues. Its bankruptcy filings, however, show that it spent much of 2011 trying to raise money and get itself refinanced. Lawyers for the Department of Energy, which had approved a $535 million loan guarantee, sat in on many of its refinancing meetings during the year.

The company’s bankruptcy has set off a political firestorm because it had been spotlighted by President Obama as just the sort of company that would provide good jobs for workers. When it went bankrupt, it threw more than a thousand people in Fremont, California out of work just before Labor Day. The company did not give the workers any notice.

In the meantime, the Department of Energy has green-lighted more than $1 billion in loan guarantees for two separate solar energy projects. The deadline for approving new loan guarantees backed by stimulus money is Friday.

One of the projects is a $737 million loan guarantee to help finance the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar power generating facility in Nye County, Nevada. The project is being developed by SolarReserve, a U.S. developer of large-scale solar power projects. The project is expected to generate more than 600 construction jobs directly. It is expected to be operational in 2013.

The other project is a 150-megawatt photovoltaic solar generation plant in Maricopa County, Arizona. The department has approved a $337 million loan guarantee to Sempra Energy, California’s third-largest utility. That project is expected to generate 300 construction jobs.

Other companies weren’t so lucky. SolarCity, another solar company, recently said that it would have to scale back an ambitious project to cover military residences in solar panels because the paperwork for its project couldn’t be completed on time.

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