The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says that Elon Musk twice violated the 2018 global settlement, under which his tweets about Tesla must be approved by a lawyer. The Wall Street Journal reports.
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The publication reviewed correspondence between the agency and Tesla. It shows that Musk did not obtain agreement with lawyers for the July 2019 tweet in which he shared plans for the company to produce 1,000 solar roof tiles per week by the end of that year. Tesla said at the time that Musk’s assessment was \”completely encouraging\”.
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The second tweet was written in May 2020. In it the businessman said that Tesla’s stock price was overvalued. In response, the carmaker said that Musk merely expressed \”his opinion\”.
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\”Tesla failed to comply with the duties imposed by the court order,\” wrote SEC official Steven Buchholz in May 2020.
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Back in the autumn of 2018, the SEC accused Elon Musk of fraud after his tweet about plans to take Tesla private by buying shares at $420 apiece. Under the 2018 global settlement, he stepped down as Tesla’s chairman and paid a $20 million fine. The parties also agreed then to mandatory pre-approval of public communications about the company’s activities by a lawyer.
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Later in 2018, Musk told CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ that no one approves his tweets, despite the agreement.
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He first breached the court-ordered obligations in 2019. His assessment of Tesla’s plans to produce electric vehicles that year proved higher than official forecasts. The SEC filed a lawsuit against the company, ordering it to vet the entrepreneur’s publications more thoroughly.
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In February 2021, media reported the SEC investigation into Elon Musk’s tweets about Dogecoin began. The businessman did not confirm, but did not deny the information.
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