The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing "numerous charges" against Elon Musk, the billionaire wrote on X and published a letter from his lawyer, reports UNN citing The Verge.
Details
Elon Musk's lawyer's letter provides few details, including what the charges might be and how many of Musk's companies are involved. However, Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro complains that "the SEC staff has demanded a settlement under which Musk would agree within 48 hours either to pay a monetary penalty or face charges on multiple counts."
However, even this is not entirely clear. It is likely that Musk will pay a fine, rather than take money from the SEC.
Musk's relationship with the SEC, which he says he does not respect, has a long history.
In 2018, Musk said he would make Tesla private, and then two weeks later acknowledged that Tesla would remain public. Then the SEC sued him over a tweet in which he said he had "secured funding" to take Tesla private. Musk reached a settlement with the agency, paying $20 million and stepping down as Tesla's board chairman. The billionaire also agreed to a "Twitter sitter" or lawyer who would control his tweets. Musk later gave up the "Twitter sitter". So the case went to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear it.
In the letter, this history is characterized as "over six years of harassment".
Just recently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) attempted to impose sanctions on Musk for failing to appear before them in a separate investigation into his takeover of Twitter. The judge refused to impose sanctions on him, as he had reimbursed the SEC for the cost of the lawyers' flights, which he had opposed.
From Musk's lawyer's letter, it is not clear whether the charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission are related to the Twitter case or something else. Earlier, Reuters reported that the Department of Justice is investigating whether Tesla's claims about autonomous driving were securities fraud. In 2023, Reuters reported that lawmakers asked the SEC to investigate Neuralink over Musk's comments about the safety of the company's brain device.
Musk also asked his artificial intelligence Grok to draw a picture of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. It was an image of a snail in a business suit, apparently a reference to Gary the snail from the children's TV show "SpongeBob SquarePants".
Recall
The wealth of Elon Musk reached a record $439.2 billion after selling SpaceX shares. The growth in capital is associated with Trump's victory in the elections and the success of his companies Tesla, SpaceX and xAI.