Harbinger accuses the fiduciary of Canuno’s bankruptcy to skip an appropriate assessment before selling assets at the old CEO
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by Brad Anderson
April 1, 2025 at 11:50 am
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- Canuno filed a bankruptcy file in Chapter 7 after burning hundreds of millions of losses.
- Harbinger alleges that the sale of assets has unfairly benefited the CEO of Ancoo without appropriate evaluation.
- The sale may include commercial secrets linked to an ongoing trial between the two companies.
It is not uncommon for a flashy EV startup to crash and burns, but the spectacular canan flame was anything but clean. After having deposited a bankruptcy deposit in chapter 7 in January and interrupted operations, the company is now tangled in a disorderly dispute which involves hidden assets, questionable sales tactics and accusations that its CEO could have been a little too good.
Read: CanoO goes bankrupt with less than $ 50,000 on the left and millions of debts
Last Friday, the electric trucking startup Harbinger has filed an official objection to the sale of the assets of cannoo to its boss, claiming that the sales process “unjustly favored Aquila”. According to the objection, Canuno has not disclosed certain assets acquired from another faulty electric vehicle startup – the arrival – and the bankruptcy trustee approved the purchase of Aquila without obtaining an independent assessment or even marketing assets to external buyers.
Allegations of hidden assets and initiate transactions
The situation becomes more troubled. Harbinger also alleges that Canuno has listed certain assets that he did not really have for sale. Although Harbinger did not specify what these assets were, he indicates that the access granted to the virtual database for potential tenderers when he planned to buy the assets allowed them to make this decision, as reported for the first time by Techcrunch.
The sale of canino to its CEO also includes a very important clause. Canuno continued Harbinger in 2022, saying that many of his former employees had stolen commercial secrets used to create a harbinger. This trial is still underway and, thanks to the purchase, Aquila will personally benefit from any regulations that Harbinger may have to pay.
In the complaint, Harbinger notes that the former boss buys unidentified “commercial secrets” from Canobo, “but Mr. Aquila alone knows what these commercial secrets are.” He adds that “a process where only one tenderer – an initiate – has the possibility of identifying the assets offered for sale and their value is not a fair process.”
Even before bankruptcy, Canuno’s finances read as a story of horror of startup. Since its foundation in 2017, the company has generated almost no turnover and has accumulated hundreds of millions of losses. In 2022 alone, Canuno pointed out an astonishing loss of $ 488 million, followed by $ 303 million in 2023. The first half of 2024 added an additional $ 118 million to the fire of joy. By comparison, Canuno reported zero income in 2022 and just under $ 900,000 in 2023, a rounded error in the world of the VE.
