NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th February, 2022) Tesla CEO Elon Musk has accused the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of "harassment" and of depriving him of the right to free speech amid continued monitoring of his interaction with shareholders after the 2018 settlement he made over a miscommunication regarding the company, a court filing said on Thursday.
Lawyer Alex Shapiro, who represents Musk, said in the court filing that his client and Tesla had expected the settlement to end the SEC's "harassment" and allow the court, not the agency, to monitor his compliance,
"But the SEC has broken its promises," the filing said, adding that the agency had been "weaponizing the consent decree by using it to try to muzzle and harass Mr. Musk and Tesla."
In a now-deleted message on Twitter from August 2018, Musk said he was considering taking the publicly-listed Tesla private at $420 (a share), adding that the funding had been secured.
The SEC deemed then that Musk did not have the funding he claimed and found the tweet to be in violation of its rules on shareholder communication. The agency also fined Musk $40 million to settle the matter.
In a court filing earlier this month, Musk said his 2018 plan to de-list Tesla, now trading at slightly below $900 a share, was "entirely truthful" and Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund was ready then to back him. Musk said investors who claimed his communication on the matter was fraudulent were wrong. The Tesla CEO also accused the SEC of trying to "chill" his right to free speech.
"The SEC seems to be targeting Mr. Musk and Tesla for unrelenting investigation largely because Mr. Musk remains an outspoken critic of the government," the filing said. "The SEC's outsized efforts seem calculated to chill his exercise of First Amendment rights rather than to enforce generally applicable laws in evenhanded fashion."
The SEC has increased its surveillance of Musk after a November incident where he polled the millions of his followers on Twitter, asking if he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla. Most voted yes. Critics contend that Musk had already adopted a plan as of September to sell a major portion of that stake - once again leaving open to debate whether he had issued a miscommunication to Tesla shareholders.
