An investigation by WMC-TV revealed GreenTech Automotive, the electric car company formerly headed by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, told its employees in Northern Mississippi to pretend to build cars to fool foreign investors.
The allegations raise more questions about McAuliffe’s involvement with GreenTech and the firm’s transparency. McAuliffe promised GreenTech would create thousands of cars and hundreds of jobs, but investigators found no evidence of any major car production:
"If I can be successful and make 10,000 cars over the next 12 months here in Horn Lake and ship them over to Denmark, that's a huge win for me, the company, and most importantly, Mississippi," said McAuliffe in July 2012.
Twelve months later, the Action News 5 Investigators have uncovered no evidence of any major car production and a former Greentech employee raises new questions about the company's operation.
"We were told, you know, when we first went in the fall of '11, we were going to build a 100 by Christmas, didn't happen," said the former employee, who asked to remain anonymous. "Then we were told we were going to build X amount through the year 2012 and that didn't happen."
The employee said he and other workers built cars, then deconstructed and rebuilt them to make it appear as though they were working. He also said there were photo shoots where workers were put on the assembly line holding tools, feigning production.
Upon the arrival at the plant of foreign investors, who can gain U.S. citizenship for large investments in U.S. companies through the EB 5 program, they pretended to work on cars to fool them into thinking they were actively producing and selling the vehicles.
Plant manager Trent Agner and GTA vice president Marianne McInerney denied those claims, and they told Channel 5 the cars were deconstructed for "training and quality control," but McInerney refused to release the number of vehicles actually made or sold last year.
[H/T America Rising]