Elon Musk has taken breaks from Twitter, considered deleting his account and yet he keeps coming back to it, much to the chagrin of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The U.S. stock market watchdog subpoenaed Tesla on Nov. 16 over a new tweet from its founder, according to a report of the company to the SEC of February 7, relayed by Reuters.
Elon Musk’s tweets accused of stock fraud
Ten days before the subpoena, Elon Musk asked his followers if he should sell 10% of his shares to Tesla. The company’s founder touted it as a tax-paying initiative: Earlier this year a report showed how tech billionaires dodge taxes by living on credit off the value of their assets.
United States: Tesla forced to remove a Full Self-Driving function
Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
Do you support this?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021
The yes won and Musk complied. According to CNBC, this sale had actually been prepared since September, but that’s not what annoyed the SEC. Nor the fall in Tesla’s price that followed. According to the company’s report, the subpoena seeks information about the ” corporate governance process around compliance with SEC rules, as amended “.
To understand the meaning of this formula, it is necessary to trace the liabilities of the conflicting trio, Elon Musk, Twitter, SEC. In 2018 the eccentric CEO announced, like this, on his favorite social network a possible resale of the company. The SEC saw it as stock market fraud and sued it.
The following year an agreement was reached between Tesla and the SEC: Elon Musk gave up his chairmanship of the board of directors in favor of Robyn Denholm, Tesla and its now “simple” general manager paid 40 million dollars in fines and, finally, Elon Musk was given a tweet-sitter.
Concretely, before posting information about his company, its founder must submit the message to a Tesla lawyer for validation. Obviously, for this compulsive tweeter, conflicts did not fail to happen.
The SEC is keen on its tweet-sitter
In 2019, the year of the deal, the SEC sued Elon Musk for contempt of court. He allegedly broke the deal by releasing Model 3 production numbers, which disagreed with those of his company, and indicating that he believed Tesla’s stock price was too high. A judge asked the parties to agree. The SEC had to clarify what the CEO could and could not tweet. The same year another reprimand concerns the production of Tesla’s solar panels.
Elon Musk has, it seems, calmed down, at least he respected the agreement for a time. Which did not prevent him from throwing a few peaks at the stock market authority, ” SEC, a three-letter acronym, the central word is that of Elon “.
SEC, three letter acronym, middle word is Elon’s
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 2, 2020
Tesla’s pans
In November 2021 everything starts again. As a bonus, the following month the SEC opened an investigation into allegations of a lack of information to shareholders and customers of Tesla’s solar panels, on fire risks.
In the United States, Elon Musk and Tesla do not only have problems with the stock market authority. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ordered the disabling of an autonomous driving feature. In March 2021, the National Labor Relations Board ordered the removal of a tweet by Musk, threatening his employees with having their stock options revoked if they voted for the United Auto Workers union.
In October 2021 a federal jury sentenced the company to pay $137 million to an African-American contractor for racial discrimination. In California, a complaint on the same register is being prepared, with suspicions of harassment at work in addition.
Also on Twitter, Elon Musk attacked Joe Biden directly. He criticizes the American president for citing only Ford and General Motors as players in the electric automobile. The president ended up doing it, on February 8. On this last point, Elon Musk’s attack has all its legitimacy, on the rest justice will decide.