Lotus are suing ousted CEO Dany Bahar for £2.5 million to recover the cost of his expensive lifestyle billed to Lotus.
After lots of grandstanding and lots of promise, but little in the way of substance, ex-Ferrari man Dany Bahar was ousted as CEO of Lotus in May.
It seems DBR-HiCom, new owners of Proton (which own Lotus), took one look at the mess in Hethel and dumped Bahar, replacing him with engineer Aslam Farikullah to try and re-focus Lotus on its core products and engineering instead of pursuing Bahar’s fantasy of churning out the biggest range of luxury supercars of any car maker on the planet.
That ousting led to Bahar issuing proceedings against Lotus for £6.7 million in August for wrongful dismissal (which gives you some idea of Bahar’s estimate of his own worth). Now, Lotus are suing Bahar for £2.5 million for some of his personal excesses Lotus say were billed to the company.
The £2.5 million is made up of overpaid salary and bonuses and unauthorised expenses said to include expenses of £1.2 million on travel, including private jets and helicopters, £3k on watches, a chauffeur and £1 million spent on renting and refurbishing two homes for Bahar’s use.
In addition to the excessive spending, Lotus claim he made damaging statements to the media (see the Lotus Facebook PR Meltdown for a good example) and breached his contract and duties as a director.
It seems likely Dany Bahar is going to find it quite tough to ever be credible again in the automotive business.
If he ever was.
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