GreenTech Automotive Inc., an electric car maker co-founded by former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, has filed for bankruptcy, seeking protection from creditors after having raised $141.5 million from hundreds of investors under a program allowing immigrants to qualify for permanent U.S. residency, the Wall Street Journal reported. The car maker, which had a manufacturing plant in Mississippi but was based in northern Virginia, filed for chapter 11 protection Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Alexandria, Va. GreenTech’s lawyer Norman D. Chirite blamed the bankruptcy filing on several factors, including a series of “negative articles” in 2013 by a conservative online publisher, as well as lawsuits filed by investors and state and local governments in Mississippi, where a planned investment of $1 billion and 1,500 jobs never panned out. From 2009 to 2013, under McAuliffe’s chairmanship, GreenTech received $141.5 million from 283 individuals in the EB-5 program, which offers immigrant investors the chance to qualify for permanent U.S. residency by investing in efforts to create U.S. jobs. GreenTech, McAuliffe and Anthony Rodham — Hillary Clinton’s brother, who was the chief executive of a company involved in GreenTech’s EB-5 fundraising — are defendants in an investor lawsuit now pending in Virginia federal court. Another group of Chinese investors who each invested $500,000 as part of the EB-5 program, sued the company in Virginia state court last year and were awarded $7.6 million, bankruptcy record shows.
