(CNN) – The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to seek sanctions against Elon Musk for failing to testify in an investigation related to his acquisition of Twitter, now called X, the regulator said in a court filing. this Friday.
Earlier this year, a federal judge ordered Musk to testify as part of the SEC’s investigation into the billionaire’s $44 billion acquisition. The agency is examining whether Musk followed the law in disclosing his purchases of Twitter shares and whether his statements related to the deal were misleading.
After some initial scheduling adjustments, the parties agreed that Musk would testify on September 10, and SEC lawyers flew to Los Angeles to take his testimony, according to Friday’s court filing. But three hours before his testimony began, Musk’s lawyer told the SEC that his client, who also runs SpaceX, had to urgently travel to the East Coast for the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission and would not be able to attend the testimony. nor reschedule it for the next day, according to the document.
The two sides then struggled to find a time to reschedule the testimony before reaching a date in early October, according to the document.
The SEC alleges that Musk violated a court order that required Musk to “seek the ‘written consent of the SEC or an order of the Court’ to change the timing of his testimony,” which the SEC alleges he failed to do before present on September 10.
“Musk’s excuse itself smacks of manipulation,” the SEC said in the document. “SpaceX had already announced that it was targeting a Tuesday morning launch two days earlier… As CEO of the company, Musk surely already knew by then that SpaceX was targeting the morning of its SEC testimony for the launch.”
He continued: “Despite this prior knowledge, Musk did not notify the SEC of his intention to attend the launch until three hours before his testimony began, and after the SEC spent thousands of dollars to fly three lawyers to Los Angeles. ”.
Musk has previously tried to fight efforts to testify again at the investigation, saying he has already done so twice.
The SEC asked the court to impose “significant conditional damages” if Musk does not appear at the new testimony date in October. The SEC also said it intends to file a sanctions motion against Musk to recover his travel costs for the canceled testimony and for other compensation.
In a response document, Musk’s attorneys argued that the Court’s “intervention is not necessary, as the parties have already agreed to a new testimony date… Mr. Musk is already under an order from this Court to appear ‘at unless an emergency occurs that (Mr. Musk) did not create and could not prevent.’”
The document represents just the latest flare-up in the long-running tension between Musk and the SEC, which began in 2018 when the agency sued him for falsely tweeting that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private.
