A Chinese company alleging that Faraday Future CEO Jia Yueting owes it $11 million for an overdue loan from 2016 convinced a California district court judge to freeze his ownership stake in the electric car startup, as well as four of his U.S. mansions, The Verge reports.
Shanghai Lan Cai Asset Management Co, Ltd. claims it issued a loan valued at $7 million for Jia Yueting’s other company, LeTV, back in 2016 which was never repaid. In a lawsuit filed in the central district of California earlier this week, the company is suing Jia for $11 million in restitution, according to The Verge.
A district judge has now frozen Jia’s ownership stake in Faraday Future, valued at $1.48 billion, and four mansions considered to be Jia’s assets valued at around $20 million, pending the decision of the lawsuit. The freeze is meant to prevent Jia from removing his claim over the assets out of the court’s jurisdiction before a decision is made.
This lawsuit is different from all of the other lawsuits concerning the Faraday CEO, most notably the suit between the company and its current main investor, the Evergrande Group. In that case, FF claims Evergrande’s refusal to followup on its $1.2 billion promised investment in the company after burning through the initial $700 million is a scheme to torpedo the American company but retain the intellectual property for Evergrande’s future ventures.
It’s all a big mess, and Jia is probably screwed. Sadly, so are all of the rest of Faraday Future’s employees.
It’s too bad, as it seemed like they were genuinely close to getting the FF 91 into production by the end of this year before the money ran out. But what would’ve happened after that was anyone’s guess.