After more than two years of investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission has sued Elon Musk for failing to disclose the Twitter shares he purchased before announcing his intention to acquire the company in 2022.
In the court filing, the SEC claims that Musk filed documents with the SEC disclosing the purchase of Twitter shares 11 days after the SEC’s deadline for doing so. (Federal law, as the SEC notes in its statement, requires investors to publicly report that they have acquired more than 5 percent of a company’s shares.) This delay, according to the regulator, allowed Musk to buy up even more Twitter shares at a time when other investors were unaware of his involvement in the company.
The regulator has been investigating Musk for years and has long been at odds with the owner of X. At one point, the SEC accused Musk of trying to stall and use a “game face” to delay the investigation into his Twitter investments. Last month, Musk shared a copy of a letter addressed to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, in which Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro accused the regulator of “six years of harassment” of Musk. The letter stated that Musk had refused the SEC’s offer of a settlement agreement related to the Twitter investigation.
Musk is also facing a class action lawsuit from other Twitter investors and an FTC investigation related to the delayed disclosure of information. However, as The New York Times notes, it is unclear whether the latest SEC lawsuit will matter, as Gensler is expected to step down after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement to The Times, Spiro called the SEC’s actions a “check-the-box complaint,” calling it “an admission by the SEC that they can’t bring a real case.”
