Elon MuskCEO of Tesla Inc.on Thursday intensified his criticism of the US stock market regulator, calling the officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission for filing fraud charges against him for 2018 tweets about taking the company private.
Musk aired his complaints to the SEC during a TED Conference in Vancouverthe same day he made news for revealing a $43 billion all-cash takeover offer for the social media company Twitter Inc..
Musk, the world’s richest person according to a Forbes tally, said the funding to take his electric car company private was indeed guaranteed at the time he posted his tweets, but that the agency “pursued the public investigation active anyway.”
“So I was forced to give in to the SEC illegally. Those bastards,” Musk told the audience.
Musk said he felt compelled to settle with the SEC because banks threatened to stop providing him with capital if he didn’t, which would have put Tesla out of business immediately.
“That’s like having a gun to your child’s head,” Musk said. “I was forced to admit that I lied to save Tesla’s life and that is the only reason,” Musk added.
Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million in civil penalties—with Musk resigning as chairman of the company—to settle SEC complaints that he defrauded investors on August 7, 2018, by posting on Twitter that he had ” secured financing” to take the company out of the stock market.
The SEC said at the time that his funding tweets “lacked adequate factual support.”
An SEC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
