The largest solar panel company in China, Hanergy Thin Film Power Group, which lost half of its value last week, might not have even been making solar panels. HTF lost $18.6 billion in frantic trading last Wednesday, burning index-tracking stock funds in its wake and ‘losing’ its chairman and majority chair man Li Hejun $15 billion. Li shorted HTF by 796 million shares two days before the stock crashed…

According to hedge fund manager John Hempton, who visited Hanergy’s main Chinese factory last month, the vast complex appeared to be pretty much empty.

“It was almost entirely silent. There was essentially no production of solar cells at all and the accounts that suggest significant production and sales are entirely fraudulent.”

Brilliantly, the demonstration solar panels set up outside the factory were oriented away from the sun…