The Securities and Exchange Commission has sued Elon Musk for allegedly failing to properly disclose his Twitter stock ownership.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has denounced the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as “a totally broken organization” following its lawsuit against him concerning his Twitter (now X) acquisition.
The SEC, responsible for enforcing laws against market manipulation, filed the lawsuit in a Washington federal court on Tuesday. The suit alleges Musk failed to timely disclose his ownership of over 5% of Twitter stock in early 2022, months before his purchase. The SEC claims this allowed Musk to “underpay by at least $150 million for shares he purchased after his beneficial ownership report was due.”
Musk responded on X to a post referencing the lawsuit’s assertion that he bought Twitter at artificially low prices, despite paying $44 billion for a company analysts valued at closer to $30 billion.
Musk called the SEC “a totally broken organization,” adding that they focus on “this kind of stuff” while ignoring “so many actual crimes that go unpunished.”
Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, maintains his client’s innocence, dismissing the SEC lawsuit as a “sham” and an admission of their inability to build a viable case against the billionaire.
Spiro described the SEC’s actions as a “multi-year campaign of harassment” resulting in “a single-count ticky tack complaint…for an alleged administrative failure to file a single form – an offense that, even if proven, carries a nominal penalty.”
SEC Chair Gary Gensler is set to leave his position on January 20th, coinciding with the presidential inauguration. President-elect Trump recently nominated Paul Atkins, a cryptocurrency advocate and CEO of Patomak Partners, as the new SEC chair.