A $765 million loan to Eastman Kodak to produce generic APIs has been on hold for months while investigators probe a number of allegations of potential wrongdoing.
The loan, which was aimed at shoring up domestic production of drugs related to the coronavirus, was brokered by the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. (DFC) and announced in July. But within days of its announcement, it was revealed that several executives at Kodak received stock options after the deal triggered a stock price surge of nearly 3,000 percent.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an investigation about how executives may have benefitted from when the deal was publicly announced and Democratic-led committees began probes of their own. The DFC quickly put the loan on hold while the investigations played out.
Now the DFC’s inspector general (IG) has released a report saying that it found no evidence of misconduct and that the DFC did not have any conflicts of interest related to the loan.
A representative for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass), told The Wall Street Journal that the IG report failed to address other concerns such as political connections related to the deal, or offer an assessment of the DFC’s process to determine if it adequately avoids taxpayer waste.
This is the second report to clear Kodak’s name and its handling of the loan. Earlier this year, the company released its own audit, which found that it had not broken any laws.
Read the full Wall Street Journal report.
