The Securities and Exchange Commission intends to seek sanctions against Elon Musk for failing to attend testimony in an inquiry into his acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, the agency said in a court filing Friday.
Earlier this year, a federal judge ordered Musk to testify as part of the SEC’s investigation into the billionaire’s $44 billion acquisition. The government is looking into whether Musk followed the rules when declaring his purchases of Twitter stock and whether his claims about the transaction were misleading.
Elon Musk Didn’t Show Up For Testimony In A Probe Over His $44 Billion Twitter Takeover. Now The SEC Wants Sanctions
After some initial scheduling back and forth, the parties decided that Musk would testify on September 10, and SEC lawyers flew to Los Angeles to conduct Musk’s hearing, according to Friday’s court filing. However, three hours before Musk’s testimony was scheduled to begin, his lawyer informed the SEC that his client, who also runs SpaceX, needed to urgently travel to the East Coast for the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission and would be unable to attend or reschedule to the following day, according to the filing.
The two sides subsequently battled to locate a time to reschedule the testimony before agreeing on an early October date, according to the petition.
The SEC claims that Musk breached a court order requiring him to “seek ‘written consent of the SEC or order of the Court’ to modify the date of his testimony,” which he did not do before failing to appear on September 10.
Elon Musk Didn’t Show Up For Testimony In A Probe Over His $44 Billion Twitter Takeover. Now The SEC Wants Sanctions
“Musk’s excuse itself smacks of gamesmanship,” the SEC wrote in its filing. “SpaceX had already announced a Tuesday morning launch two days beforehand… Musk, the company’s Chief Technical Officer, must have known by then that SpaceX planned to launch on the morning of his SEC appearance.
It proceeded with this: “Despite this advance knowledge, Musk did not notify the SEC of his intent to attend the launch until three hours before his testimony was to begin, and after the SEC spent thousands of dollars to fly three attorneys to Los Angeles.”
The SEC requested that the court impose “meaningful conditional relief” if Musk does not arrive for the revised October testimony date. The SEC also stated that it expects to file a sanctions motion against Musk to recoup its travel expenses for the canceled testimony, as well as additional relief.
Elon Musk Didn’t Show Up For Testimony In A Probe Over His $44 Billion Twitter Takeover. Now The SEC Wants Sanctions
Musk’s lawyers responded that the Court’s intervention was unnecessary, as the parties had already agreed on a fresh testimony date… This Court has already ordered Mr. Musk to attend ‘absent an emergency that (Mr. Musk) did not create and could not avoid.'”
The complaint is the latest escalation in Musk’s long-running feud with the SEC, which began in 2018 when the agency sued him for falsely claiming that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private.
SOURCE | CNN
