The chief executive of Solyndra, Brian Harrison, and Bill Stover, the chief financial officer, hired lawyers in preparation for the hearing this week before the House Energy and Commerce committee and got advice not to say anything, according to a representative of the lawyers.
The offices and the homes of some executives of Solyndra, a California solar-panel manufacturer, were recently raided by the F.B.I. as part of a criminal inquiry into the bankruptcy. The company said in a statement that it was “not aware of any wrongdoing by Solyndra officers, directors or employees in conjunction with the DOE loan guarantee or otherwise.”
In the wake of the bankruptcy filing, the Republican leaders of the committee asked the Department of Energy on Tuesday not to rush to give out loan guarantees for clean-energy projects in the final days of the program. But the department said it had already weeded out the projects that it would not have time to finish by the deadline, Sept. 30, and would press ahead with the others.
Republicans maintain that the department rushed through the approval of the loan to Solyndra for political reasons. They have released internal Obama administration e-mails that show that the White House was eager to have Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announce the deal in part because it would show action on creating jobs.
The committee chairman, Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, and two subcommittee chairmen wrote to Energy Secretary Steven Chu that his agency’s haste had hurt “the quality and comprehensiveness” of the due diligence performed by the department and the Office of Management and Budget, which had to sign off on the loans. The department has been approving new loans at an accelerated pace in the last three months, the Republicans said.
“We are concerned that another rush to meet stimulus deadlines will result in DOE closing these deals before they are ready,” the chairmen wrote.
According to the Energy Department, 18 loan deals have been completed, for a total of $8.5 billion, and there are “conditional commitments” for 14 other projects with a total value of $9.3 billion. The department said in a statement, “We are committed to ensuring that every deal closed before September 30 is fully vetted and will not close any deal that has not received full due diligence by September 30.”
It added, “Every agreement in our portfolio has undergone many months of extensive review and evaluation before a conditional commitment is signed.”
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d3aba3ad040247845e6176e48c7298a4
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