The top executive at Ultimate Nutrition Inc., which makes protein powder for bodybuilders, says he destroyed millions of dollars of the shake supplement ingredients and other raw materials before putting the company into bankruptcy last year, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Executives at TD Bank N.A., which has been fighting the Connecticut company over a $13 million loan, don’t believe it. As a battle between the company and the bank escalated last fall, Chief Executive Brian Rubino says he went to Ultimate Nutrition’s warehouse and got rid of roughly 40 percent of company’s bank-monitored inventory because of its “unsaleability,” according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford. That move cost the company $3.8 million. Bank officials are calling for an investigation into what happened to the ingredients, speculating in recent court papers that they might have been “moved off site.” Perhaps the ingredients never existed in the first place but were used to “pump up” the company’s financial statements — a move that would have enabled Ultimate Nutrition to get access to a bigger loan, bank officials said.
