The prospect of a new battery factory in Northumberland has suffered a setback after Britishvolt’s buyer was raided by Australian police.
Investigators went to the offices of Scale Facilitation and SaniteX, owned by Australian entrepreneur David Collard, over alleged tax fraud.
Recharge Industries, a subsidiary of Scale Facilitation, bought Britishvolt this year after it collapsed.
But it is yet to pay for a future plant near the port of Blyth.
Sources close to Mr Collard, who is a former partner at accountancy giant PwC, said the tax attack was due to a misunderstanding of the interaction between US and Australian tax documents and that all parties had cooperated.
Recharge Industries is ultimately owned and operated by Scale Facilitation, a New York-based investment fund that has offices in Australia.
Recharge Industries bought Britishvolt’s assets after it went into administration despite public support from politicians including former prime minister Boris Johnson.
Britishvolt planned to build a £4bn plant in Camboa near Blyth, Northumberland, to produce batteries for electric vehicles and create around 3,000 skilled jobs.
However, the company struggled to turn a profit and ended up running out of money in January.
The deadline for Recharge Industries to finalize and pay for the purchase of the Northumberland site has been extended well beyond the original March 31 date.
Insiders close to Recharge confirmed staff salaries in Australia had gone unpaid for about two weeks, but insisted those payments had already been made.
They said the company remained confident it could secure funding to complete the purchase of the land near Blyth in the next two to four weeks.
The BBC understands Recharge’s owners are still hopeful a deal to develop the £4bn site can go ahead.
Recharge is expected to take a minority stake in a new company called North East Gigafactory Development LLP, with well-known deep-pocketed investors Tritax and Abrdn owning the majority between them.
Recharge’s plan for the site was initially to develop battery storage technology, not batteries, for electric vehicles.
A person familiar with the situation told the BBC that the emphasis had seen the government’s enthusiasm for the project cool.
“The government certainly hasn’t rolled out the red carpet,” they said, and the BBC understands the Australian owners have not met with either Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch or Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Grant Shapps.
However, hopes of the imminent launch of a plant it hopes will bring thousands of jobs to the North East appear to have been dashed once again.