Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) keeps harassing him amid ongoing investigations after being charged with false and misleading statements in 2018.
The controversy started in 2018 when Musk tweeted that he had funding secured to allow Tesla to go private at $420 a share according to Yahoo Finance. The SEC took notice of this and started an investigation in which it was alleged that the tweet by Musk constituted fraud with the case subsequently settled with Musk and Tesla for $40 million.
Late last week, a lawyer for Musk came out and said that they believe the SEC isn’t keeping their end of the bargain by distributing the $40 million among Tesla shareholders and that using their resources to investigate Musk is a waste of time.
“Worst of all, the SEC seems to be targeting Mr Musk and Tesla for unrelenting investigation largely because Mr Musk remain an outspoken critic of the government,” they said.
“The SEC’s outsized efforts seem calculated to chill his exercise of First Amendment rights rather than to enforce generally applicable laws in even-handed fashion”.
SEC official Steve Buchholz has responded to Musk’s claims by saying “Given the complexity of the distribution, it has taken time to develop the plan of allocation”. Mr Buchholz went on to say, “That process is nearing competition and barring any unforeseen circumstances, the distributions staff expects to submit the proposed plan of distribution for the court’s approval by the end of March 2022”.
Musk was also investigated in 2019 and 2020 when SEC lawyers wrote to him asking why Tesla’s production numbers and stock prices were tweeted about without the approval of Tesla lawyers. According to Tesla, the statements were a part of the settlement policy and agreement.
In the policy it was agreed that lawyers would approve some of Musk’s tweet before being sent out, as several tweets were deemed misleading by the SEC. The 2018 settlement required musk step down as chairman of Tesla for three years.
