Elon Musk’s continued leadership at Tesla was thrown into doubt on Thursday as US regulators sued him over his claims last month that he was close to a buyout of the electric car maker.
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a fraud complaint in the federal court in Manhattan alleging that the Tesla chief executive made “false and misleading statements” when he made the claims in an impromptu series of tweets.
“Musk’s statements, disseminated via Twitter, falsely indicated that, should he so choose, it was virtually certain that he could take Tesla private at a purchase price that reflected a substantial premium over Tesla stock’s then-current share price, that funding for this multibillion-dollar transaction had been secured, and that the only contingency was a shareholder vote,” the SEC said.