US CVM wants to sue Musk for failure to testify

The SEC (Securities Commission, in Portuguese) North American said on Friday (September 20, 2024) that it intends to impose sanctions on Elon Musk after he missed a hearing on September 10. According to the agency, the businessman violated the court order “Obtain written approval from the SEC or an order of the court to change the date of his testimony”. Read on Complete Document (PDF – 187 kB, in English).

Musk’s defense says he didn’t show up for a reason “Emergency”. The businessman went to Cape Canaveral (Florida) the same day to oversee the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission. SpaceXThe company where he is the technical director.

The SEC is investigating whether Musk violated securities laws in 2022 when he started piling up X (formerly Twitter) and shares. “took a while” to advertise. The rule is that investors must issue their shares once they reach 5% ownership of the companies. At the time, Musk issued a 9.2% stake in Twitter and later offered to buy the entire company.

Regarding the lack of testimony, the SEC alleges, Musk, as SpaceX’s chief technology officer, “Of course I already knew” As the company discussed the topic 2 days ago of the planned launch.

The defense gave 3 hours notice to the SEC and agreed to a new date of October 3 for filing in court. However, the body wants conditional action if Kasthuri does not reappear. He also said he plans to file a motion against the businessman to recover the cost of the lawyers’ trip to Los Angeles.

“Despite this prior knowledge, Musk did not inform the SEC of his intention to attend the release until 3 hours before his testimony began, and after the SEC had spent thousands of dollars to fly 3 lawyers to Los Angeles.”SEC attorney Robin Andrews wrote.

Classified safety barriers “severe” And “unnecessary”. Absence is the reason, he said “Emergency” And that “There is no reason to believe that such an emergency will recur”.

Musk

This isn’t the first time Elon Musk has missed a meeting with the SEC. In October 2023, the agency sued the businessman for his absence from a scheduled interview at his office in San Francisco.

In 2018, he paid a US$20 million fine for his Twitter posts about taking Tesla personally. The businessman had to agree that lawyers would preemptively review his publications about the company.