The Australian Federal Police swooped on the office of Scale Facilitation on Friday.

Scale Facilitation subsidiary Recharge Industries bought Britishvolt out of administration in March and confirmed it wanted to go-ahead with plans to build a £300m car battery plant in Northumberland where main contractor ISG paused construction work last summer when funding dried-up for the project.

Scale Facilitation told The Times: “We have and will continue to fully co-operate with the Australian Taxation Office and now the AFP. We deny any wrongdoing.”