Written by Morgan Watkins of the Courier-Journal
Braidy Industries is claiming in a court filing this week that an internal investigation found “red flags” concerning founder Craig Bouchard’s use of company funds, including tens of thousands of dollars in “unsubstantiated” travel and meal charges to company credit cards.
Braidy filed the legal document in a Delaware court on Thursday in response to a lawsuit Bouchard recently filed against the company, according to a spokeswoman for Braidy who provided a copy of it to The Courier Journal. Bouchard disputed Braidy’s assertions.
Its board of directors removed Bouchard from his posts as the company’s CEO and board chairman in late January, although he remains a member of the board.
Bouchard’s lawsuit claims the defendants breached a company voting agreement by not fulfilling their contractual obligations after Bouchard requested Porter, Preston, Price and Schuh be removed from the board of directors.
In its court filing, Braidy claims its chief financial officer, Julio Ramirez, informed the board about “his concerns about Bouchard’s apparent misuse of Braidy funds, violation of Company Policy, use of a questionable capital raise advisor, undisclosed related party transactions, poor judgment and other decisions that worsened the Company’s financial liquidity situation, and misrepresentations to the Board and other stakeholders.”
Bouchard disputed the claims on a Friday Facebook post: “The CFO and his team approved all executive expenses on a monthly basis since the founding of the company. In three years, not even one issue with my expenses. Now, a month after my removal they have made outrageous deliberate inaccurate suggestions about my expenses unsupported by facts.”
(Cross-posted via the Kentucky Press News Service. Read the rest of the article at the Courier-Journal.)
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