The Securities and Trade Fee sued Elon Musk on Thursday to pressure him to testify about his accumulation of shares in Twitter, which the tech billionaire purchased final yr and has since renamed X.
Mr. Musk quietly purchased shares of Twitter between January and April 2022, amassing a 9 p.c stake within the firm earlier than providing to purchase it outright. The S.E.C. has mentioned that Mr. Musk missed a deadline to publicly disclose his purchases of Twitter inventory. Buyers are required to reveal their stakes inside 10 days in the event that they purchase greater than 5 p.c of an organization’s shares, however Mr. Musk didn’t achieve this, the company mentioned.
In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court docket for the Northern District of California, the S.E.C. mentioned that Mr. Musk was subpoenaed to testify final month about his inventory purchases however failed to seem. Bloomberg earlier reported the company’s lawsuit towards Mr. Musk.
“The S.E.C. has already taken Mr. Musk’s testimony a number of occasions on this misguided investigation — sufficient is sufficient,” mentioned Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Mr. Musk.
Mr. Musk supplied to purchase Twitter in April 2022 for roughly $44 billion, then tried to again out of the deal in July of that yr. He accomplished his buy of the corporate final October.
His takeover has been the topic of a number of lawsuits and investigations by the federal authorities. The Federal Commerce Fee has probed whether or not X had the sources to guard customers’ privateness after he laid off a lot of its employees and several other senior executives chargeable for privateness and safety resigned. The company has additionally sought to depose Mr. Musk. Former Twitter shareholders have additionally sued Mr. Musk for fraud in a case associated to his belated disclosure of his stake within the firm.
Mr. Musk and X’s chief govt, Linda Yaccarino, have been targeted on bringing advertisers again to the platform. Many advertisers have been skittish about returning after Mr. Musk relaxed content material moderation insurance policies on the location. Ms. Yaccarino on Thursday was set to satisfy with the bankers who financed Mr. Musk’s acquisition to transient them on X’s monetary progress.
Jack Begg contributed analysis.