On May 6, 2024, SpaceX and Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk attended the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, USA.
David Swanson | Reuters
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on Musk if he continues to violate a court order by testifying in an investigation into his 2022 acquisition of Twitter.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been investigating whether Musk or others who worked with him committed securities fraud in 2022 Tesla Prior to the leveraged buyout of the company, now known as X, the CEO sold his shares in the automaker and increased his stake in Twitter.
In May, a court ordered Musk to testify before financial regulators about the Twitter deal.
“Musk has now failed to appear before the SEC twice: first in September 2023, when he ignored a lawful administrative subpoena; and last week, He ignored clear court orders.
Documents show Andrews asked the judge to consider imposing sanctions if Musk delays further.
“The court must make clear that Musk's subterfuge and delaying tactics must stop,” Andrews wrote.
The filing also revealed in a footnote that the SEC intends to ask the court to hold Musk in “civil contempt” to cancel his September 10 testimony, giving the agency only a few hours to notify that he will not appear in court. The SEC said Musk's cancellation cost the SEC time and money because it sent officers to Los Angeles to oust him, but he did not appear for investigative interviews.
Musk's testimony in the investigation has been rescheduled for early October at the SEC's offices, the filing said.
“Absent further action by the court, nothing would have prevented Musk” from “simply showing up on that date,” Andrews wrote.
Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro, a partner at New York law firm Quinn Emanuel, wrote in response that “such drastic action would be inappropriate,” adding that the SEC and Musk have agreed that it can be rescheduled given the emergency.
Additionally, Musk and his company “have been and are cooperating with the SEC on multiple other ongoing investigations,” Spiro wrote.
in separate, civil litigation Regarding the same Twitter deal, the Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System has sued Musk in New York federal court, accusing him of intentionally concealing his incremental investment in Twitter and intending to acquire the company.
Lawyers for the pension fund argued that Musk's failure to clearly disclose his investment in and acquisition of Twitter affected the decisions of other shareholders and put them at a disadvantage.
The New York case uncovered communications between an unnamed person at Morgan Stanley and Jared Birchall, an executive who managed Musk's money. A contact at Morgan Stanley wrote in a message in February 2022 that Musk's Twitter stock buying strategy was closely watched.
“No one but you and me knows what happened and why,” one person at Morgan Stanley wrote. “Disobey, obey no one.”
Read the court documents below:
