Founder and executive chairman of zero-emission truck maker Nikola has resigned, the company said in a statement, after fraud charges that knocked its share price down and triggered a regulatory investigation.
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The Phoenix-based automaker said on Sunday it had accepted Trevor Milton's resignation and would be replaced as head of the board by Stephen Girsky, already a Nikola board member and former vice chairman of General Motors (GM).
Chief Executive Officer Mark Russell retains his position.
Strategic partnerships
Founded by Trevor Milton in 2015, with the ambition to develop trucks and pickups powered by electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells, Nikola has yet to manufacture anything, but has drawn attention by signing strategic partnerships with renowned groups such as GM and German engineering giant Bosch.
The announcement of the partnership with GM on September 8 caused Nikola shares to jump 41% on the New York Stock Exchange.
But two days later, investment firm Hindenburg Research published a report accusing the start-up of being a “
complex fraud
” based on the multiple lies of its founder and of having “
misled its partners (.. .) by falsely claiming to have important technologies
”.
Stock market plunge
The announcement sent the company's shares plunging, which lost 36% of their value in three days.
It also sparked an investigation by the U.S. Stock Exchange Constable, the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to sources cited by Bloomberg.
“
The focus should be on the company and its mission (...) not on me,
” Trevor Milton said in a separate statement.
"
I intend to defend myself against false allegations made against me by outside detractors
," he continued.
Nikola had rejected most of the claims in the Hindenburg Research report.
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But the company does not completely deny one of the investment firm's most spectacular attacks, namely the staging of a video in 2017 showing one of its prototypes in action.
According to Hindenburg, the truck was "
towed to the top of a hill on an isolated road and simply filmed going down the slope
."
Nikola retorts "
never having said that the truck worked with its own propulsion system in the video
" but having simply indicated that the vehicle was "
in motion
".
