US SEC pursues Elon Musk over 2022 Twitter stock purchase

Elon Musk

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on Jan. 14 that it filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk, accusing him of violating federal laws during his acquisition of Twitter by failing to inform the SEC "in a timely manner" that he had purchased shares in the company in 2022 before fully acquiring it.

The SEC stated in its filing that the defendant Elon Musk failed to promptly disclose to the SEC that he had acquired more than 5% of Twitter's publicly traded common stock in March 2022, in violation of federal securities laws," adding that this violation "enabled him to artificially lower the purchase price."

According to the SEC, this omission allowed the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX to "avoid paying at least $150 million for shares he purchased after the deadline for disclosing his beneficial ownership" in Twitter, which he later renamed to X.

The SEC previously filed a lawsuit against Musk in Oct. 2024, seeking to compel him to testify as part of an investigation into his acquisition of Twitter.

The request for Musk’s testimony was one of many legal actions related to his controversial acquisition of Twitter. However, the SEC confirmed that the billionaire did not attend his interrogation session, despite several postponements of the date.

In Feb. 2024, a federal judge ordered Musk to appear before the SEC.

Elon Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, confirmed that his client's testimony was obtained "on multiple occasions as part of this misleading investigation," adding, "Enough."

Agency France-Presse attempted to clarify Spiro's position regarding this new lawsuit, but he did not respond immediately.