By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Two investment companies stand to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks under a bankruptcy exit plan for failed solar company Solyndra, government lawyers say.
Bankrupt solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC is busy selling off assets, but who owns what's left over is hard to say.
Fast running out of money, solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC last summer sold off nearly $60 million worth of inventory for less than $20 million in cash to a newly formed corporate entity closely tied to the company's biggest investors, records show.
Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu denied playing politics in his handling of a failed half-billion-dollar loan to solar panel maker Solyndra LLC, days after newly released emails showed his department sought to delay bad news about the company until after the 2010 mid-term elections.
Before solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC went bankrupt, the U.S. Department of Energy — which had signed off on more than a half-billion dollars in loans — approved paying up to $1.1 million for an investment bank's advice on restructuring Solyndra "both in and out of bankruptcy," records show.
Obama administration officials refused to say Wednesday whether anybody would be fired over the decision to award solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra LLC a half-billion dollars in loans before it went bankrupt and saw its headquarters raided by the FBI.
