Securities told Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) last year that Chief Executive Elon Musk’s use of Twitter had twice breached a court-ordered policy requiring his tweets to be approved by company lawyers, according to a record acquired by The Wall Street Journal.
Tesla and the Securities and Exchange Commission established an enforcement action in 2018 alleging that Mr. Musk had committed fraud by tweeting about a potential collapse of his company.
Mr. Musk paid $20 million to put an end to that case while Tesla also paid $20 million and agreed to have his public statements on social media inspected by Tesla lawyers.
In correspondence sent to Tesla in 2019 and 2020, the SEC stated that tweets Mr. Musk wrote regarding Tesla’s solar roof production volumes and its stock price hadn’t encountered the needed approval by Telsa’s lawyers.
The communications, which haven’t been previously reported, spotlight the running strain between the nation’s elite corporate regulator and Mr. Musk, who publicly insulted the SEC even after setting fraud claims with the agency.
The SEC told Tesla in May 2020 that the company had failed “to enforce these procedures and controls despite repeated infringements by Mr. Musk.”
The letter, signed by Steven Buchholz, a senior SEC official in its San Fransisco office, added: “Tesla has relinquished the duties needed of it by the court’s order.”
START YOUR TRADING JOURNEY TODAY
%202.png)
.png)
.png)
