Elon Musk is facing possible sanctions from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after he failed to attend a court-ordered testimony related to his acquisition of Twitter.
The billionaire was supposed to appear in a Los Angeles courthouse on 10 September, as part of an ongoing investigation into whether Musk complied with legal requirements when disclosing his purchases of Twitter stock before his USD 44 billion buyout of the social media platform in 2022. The SEC also aims to determine whether Musk made misleading statements during the acquisition process.
Just three hours before his scheduled appearance, Musk informed the SEC that he would not be attending the hearing, opting instead to oversee the launch of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn spacecraft. The SEC offered to reschedule Musk’s testimony for the following day, but his legal team declined, agreeing only to potential court dates in October.
The SEC has now asked the court to impose “meaningful conditional relief” if Musk fails to appear next month and has indicated plans to file for sanctions to recover its costs, including travel expenses for three attorneys who had already flown to Los Angeles.
This latest dispute is not the first time Musk has clashed with the SEC. In 2018, he was forced to step down as chairman of Tesla and pay USD 40 million in penalties following tweets that the SEC deemed to have manipulated Tesla’s stock price.
In recent years, the agency has also probed Musk over Tesla’s claims regarding its self-driving technology and the company’s reported use of funds to build a personal “glass house” for Musk.
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