According to fraud judgment: Trump pardoned the founder of insolvent e-truck builders Nikola

The founder of the now insolvent electric truck manufacturer Nikola has been pardoned by US President Donald Trump. Trevor Milton did nothing wrong, Trump claimed. He heard that the Nikola founder had only been persecuted because he was a Trump supporter. Milton was convicted of fraud in 2022, and the investigation was initiated at the end of Trump’s first term.

In New York, milton found out that investors have given investors incorrect information about the status of Nikola technology. The allegations included that Nikola made a truck shut down for a video in 2017 to show it in motion. Milton was not yet in prison for four years because his appointment was made. He had always said that he had sincerely believed in Nikola’s success.

At the time, Milton sold Nikola shares worth around $ 400 million. The public prosecutor had only applied for a few weeks ago to conduct Milton to pay $ 661 million to shareholders. He had donated more than two million dollars for political purposes last year, especially to Trump’s Republican Party. Among his lawyers, the brother of US Justice Minister Pam Bondi, wrote the “Wall Street Journal”.

Nikola goes out of business

Milton resigned as Nikola boss after the first allegations in autumn, but the truck maker never really recovered from the scandal. Recently, Nikola was looking for protection against the creditors in a US insolvency proceedings after a long struggle for survival. You want to sell company values ​​and hire your own business, it said. The third largest creditor is the German car supplier Bosch, to whom Nikola owes $ 13.3 million.

Nikola started a decade ago with the plan to bring trucks with fuel cell and battery drive onto the street. Nikola went to the stock exchange in 2020 and was at times worth around $ 29 billion in the electric auto euphoria. Most recently, Nikola delivered tractor – but too few for a sustainable business.