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GreenTech Automotive Inc. wants a bankruptcy court to toss a $35 million claim by Plastech Holding Corp., arguing that an earlier lawsuit involving the two companies was permanently dismissed, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. GreenTech Automotive, an electric car maker whose backers once included former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, in February filed for bankruptcy along with several affiliates, 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. GreenTech had 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 GreenTech was expected to churn out cars but where efforts fell flat. GreenTech had also said in its initial chapter 11 filing in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Alexandria, Va., that another blow came around 2015 when Plastech “falsely accused” it of interfering with Plastech’s relationship with a Chinese automaker. GreenTech said that case was dismissed last year after it was established that the Michigan company “forged the Chinese company’s signature on a fictitious agreement.” But by then GreenTech said it incurred heavy legal expenses, and was forced to terminate its own relationship with the Chinese company, costing it tens of millions of dollars and effectively destroying it “as a viable enterprise.”

Things may be looking up for creditors of Mt. Gox, once the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange that ultimately went down in flames after saying thousands of Bitcoins had disappeared, Bloomberg News reported. The Tokyo District Court on Friday approved the start of civil rehabilitation proceedings, meaning the bankruptcy process that’s been underway since 2014 will be put on hold, according to a document posted on mtgox.com. This may mean traders will finally get their Bitcoins back. In Japanese bankruptcy proceedings, non-monetary claims such as Bitcoin are converted into traditional money based on the value of the asset at the start of the proceedings, the statement said. That would mean creditors wouldn’t reap the rewards of the token’s price appreciation in recent years. But the document indicates that in the case of Mt. Gox’s civil rehabilitation process, the Bitcoins won’t be turned into monetary claims, indicating that creditors could be reimbursed in Bitcoins at current prices. Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection four years ago after disclosing that it lost 850,000 Bitcoins, then worth about $500 million, or around $5 billion at today’s price levels. The now-defunct company, which later said it recovered about 200,000 Bitcoins, blamed hackers for the loss.

A Texas oil and gas businessman who called himself the “Frack Master” has been charged with securities fraud in connection with a scheme that defrauded investors out of $62.6 million, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Christopher Faulkner was arrested on Monday at the Los Angeles International Airport and charged in a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Dallas, Texas, prosecutors said. The criminal charges came two years after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Faulkner, a frequent media commentator on oil-and-gas topics, and his Dallas-based Breitling Energy Corp. and accused them of fraud. The complaint charged the Dallas resident with securities fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. According to the complaint, from 2009 to 2016, Faulkner established several companies through which he acquired and then sold to investors working and royalty interest in oil and gas prospects in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and North Dakota.

Bankrupt jewelry seller Claire’s Stores Inc. will spend the summer evaluating potential buyers after a judge ordered the retailer to open up the sale of the company to all bidders, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath on Friday set an Aug. 31 deadline for bids for the company, part of a revived marketing process ordered in response to creditor complaints that Claire’s previous attempts to sell itself were flawed. Claire’s, which filed for bankruptcy protection in March, said it looked for buyers before and after agreeing to a restructuring deal backed by the retailer’s private-equity owner Apollo Global Management and top ranking lenders, Elliott Management Corp. and Monarch Alternative Capital LP, but came up empty-handed. Bondholder Oaktree Capital Management criticized the marketing process as being designed to ward off competition. Among other things, Claire’s insisted that bidders offer cash only, and in an amount sufficient to pay off first-lien debt.

A company that insured billions of dollars of private student loans faces insolvency, raising concerns about smaller financial institutions’ ability to lend money to students heading to school this fall, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. South Dakota’s insurance regulator has moved to shut down ReliaMax Surety Co., a Sioux Falls, S.D.-based company that offered insurance against losses to financial institutions that originated private student loans. The company, a subsidiary of ReliaMax Holding Co., provides insurance on about $2.7 billion in loans made by more than 400 lenders. Private student loan insurance has been a relatively safe investment because loss rates in the sector have been low compared with other types of consumer debt. But losses on some ReliaMax-insured loans began to creep up in recent years. The company also found it had priced premiums too low for the policies of those older loans that weren’t being repaid.

A judge approved the lead bid for Gawker on Wednesday while a lawyer for the blog’s former publisher said two or three other parties have also expressed interest in potentially acquiring the mothballed website, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein authorized the $1.13 million lead offer from Mineola, N.Y.-based advertising firm Didit during a hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The court also set a July 9 deadline for submitting potentially higher bids for the blog. Advisers liquidating Gawker Media LLC will hold a bankruptcy auction if rival offers for the site emerge in the coming weeks.

Westinghouse Electric Co. is battling former subcontractor Fluor Corp. over some $260 million in damage claims stemming from failed efforts to launch a new wave of nuclear reactors in the U.S., WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The dispute erupted at the tail end of a bankruptcy that saw most of Westinghouse separated from its Japanese parent, Toshiba Corp., and sold to Brookfield Business Partners LP for $4.6 billion. Fluor’s bankruptcy claims include fees linked to the termination of Westinghouse’s contracts to build new reactors in South Carolina and Georgia, projects where cost overruns and delays mounted for years. Fluor was a subcontractor that worked on the projects for about 14 months before Westinghouse filed for chapter 11 protection and scrapped its construction business.

A U.S. solar company that convinced Washington, D.C., to impose protective tariffs on cheap imports to help it survive is seeking bankruptcy court approval to abandon its inventory of solar panels as it winds down operations, Reuters reported. In a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware late on Tuesday, Suniva Inc. requested approval to abandon solar panels with a liquidation value that it says exceeds $6 million. The filing follows news last week that Suniva’s biggest creditor, SQN Capital Management, won an auction of the solar company’s technology, licenses and manufacturing equipment.

Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt are among a group of actors who have sought to defend their financial and artistic interests in films distributed or produced by Harvey Weinstein’s former studio as the business is sold in bankruptcy to a private-equity firm, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. More than a dozen objections were filed Monday in the studio’s chapter 11 case in Wilmington, Del., on behalf of actors, writers and producers who are challenging the terms under which Weinstein Co. seeks to transfer film participation agreements to the purchaser, Lantern Capital Partners. Weinstein Co. has classified these agreements as so-called non-executory contracts. The studio has said that it can make this classification because “the failure to perform any remaining obligations under any such contract would not constitute a material breach” of the agreements. Lawyers for the actors say the distinction is important because it could give the studio or Lantern the ability to forgo outstanding participation payments or exploit these films in the future without their clients’ input.