Faraday Future Sues Former Execs For Allegedly Stealing Trade Secrets

Faraday Future is suing a startup company founded by its former chief financial and technology officers, accusing them of stealing technology secrets and poaching employees.

According the complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Faraday Future sues former CFO Stefan Krause and former CTO Ulrich Kranz for poaching at least 20 employees to their company called Evelozcity. The lawsuit also claims that some of these former employees brought technology secrets with them.

Evelozcity said that it did not have nor need technology from Faraday Future, Bloomberg reports.

“This complaint continues Faraday’s pattern of hurling false and inflammatory accusations against us,” the startup said in a statement. “We will respond to the many recklessly inaccurate allegations in this desperate lawsuit at the appropriate time.”

Faraday Future hired Krause to raise funding and oversee its finances. A few months later and after meetings with investors, Krause was demanding FF’s founder Jia Yueting to step down and give them operational control of the company, according to the filing.

Much of the dispute revolves around the date of Krause’s departure. He’s said he quit last October while Faraday Future claims he asked on November 6 the then-head of human resources to back-date his resignation by two weeks.  The rival Evelozcity was founded the next day, on November 7 according to FF.

Faraday Future also released a statement on November 10, saying that it had terminated Krause’s employment over “malfeasance” with immediate effect, without citing a date.

According to the lawsuit, employees who left Faraday for Evelozcity were encouraged to download thousands of confidential documents and trade secrets, with Faraday calling for a jury trial.