ReneSola denies accusations of fraud, ghost projects

Downstream solar company ReneSola Ltd (NYSE:SOL) on Thursday denied claims by a research insights firm that it is a fraudulent business with some “non-existent” projects across Europe and the US.

ReneSola said in a press statement that the report issued by Grizzly Research LLC “contains inaccurate conclusions, misstatements of historical facts, errors, and superfluous opinions”. The company stressed that it plans to address with detailed explanations the key inaccuracies of the report, which is currently being studied. This will happen on December 7, when ReneSola will hold its earnings conference call.

According to Grizzly Research, the solar company has been vastly misrepresenting its project development pipeline in order to access the US capital markets. The research firm claims that most of ReneSola’s projects in Europe seemingly do not exist.

“We were able to confirm this in several cases with the local government authorities, which leads us to believe that SOL might have fabricated projects to give the appearance of a better development pipeline and future economics,” the report says.

In 2017, ReneSola sold its solar products manufacturing and LED distribution businesses to its chairman and CEO at the time, Xianshou Li. Eventually, in July 2019, Li stepped down from his post due to personal issues. Grizzly Research, though, claims that he continues to secretly exercise substantial control over the firm and is still its biggest shareholder, while dealing with legal issues in China.

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