Following Williams' successful legal case victory against their former title sponsor, ROKiT are now launching $149m legal action against the team. In 2022, Williams were awarded over $32 million after a court ruled that ROKiT had reneged on a sponsorship deal that was due to run for three years, starting from 2019. The ROKiT branding appeared on the cars in 2019, but was removed before the COVID 19-hit 2020 season got underway, after Williams had stopped receiving payments. Now, the telecommunications company have responded by claiming compensation for damage to its reputation, believing that Williams had "fraudulently concealed" their lack of car development budget.
The claims made state that "the arbitrator was not aware of the fraudulent concealment of statements of material facts by defendants that were not discovered until after the arbitration had concluded." The claim added that ROKiT "learned that the car was never capable of performing to the standards that defendants had guaranteed to the plaintiffs, and that defendants were aware of and concealed this fact." It continued to say that Williams "intentionally and fraudulently concealed the fact that Williams Engineering simply did not have enough money to develop the F1 car." The claim says that "as a direct and proximate result of the fraudulent statements made by the defendants, plaintiffs have suffered significant financial loss and damage to their goodwill and business reputation." The amount of compensation asked for is "an amount in excess of $149,528,550 dollars."
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