The authorities haunt Elon Musk and his scandalous tweets. The US market regulator, the SEC, continues to pressure Tesla's CEO in his poll to relinquish up to 10% of the company he launched in November, which could mean violating a previous agreement to avoid sanctions.
This was reported yesterday by the company itself, which said the SEC was investigating whether the firm and Musk violated an agreement by which they avoided fraud charges, following a series of tweets published in 2018. At the time, controversy arose over a post in which he proposed taking Tesla out of the market by buying shares at $420. Musk said he has the funds to do so.
Tesla shares soared on the reports, but it was later revealed that Musk lied and never had the necessary and promised funding to buy the company's shares. Therefore, the SEC filed a fraud lawsuit against Musk and Tesla, but both reached an agreement to close the case. In addition to removing Musk from the presidency and imposing a $20 million fine on him, one of the keys to the agreement was that the manufacturer would appoint a person to review the businessman's tweets before they were published.
Despite the agreement, in recent years Musk has been able to tweet without restriction or approval of the content of his messages.
On the other hand, the SEC filings also indicate that on January 3, Tesla received a notice from the California Civil Rights Agency stating that the company could face a civil lawsuit for discrimination and harassment following an investigation. The notice comes after Tesla was fined by a court for workplace harassment.
In October 2021, a jury awarded former Tesla employee Owen Diaz $137 million for racial discrimination.
After the media released information about the SEC investigation and the California notice, Musk posted a tweet criticizing the "mainstream" media. "Why is the 'mainstream' media a relentless source of hate?" Musk told his 73 million Twitter followers.
