Musk faces SEC questions over X takeover

Elon Musk was ordered by a federal court to answer more questions from lawyers on Thursday about his acquisition of Twitter – now called X – and the financial world has one question: Will he be there?

Last month, he failed to appear at a court-ordered appearance at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Los Angeles office.

The interview, scheduled for Thursday, is part of a high-level investigation into whether Mr. Musk waited too long to disclose that he was building a stake in Twitter before taking over the social media platform in 2022.

The billionaire had previously said this delay was a mistake.

The country’s top securities regulator is trying to force him to appear on Thursday by demanding possible sanctions.

For the Sept. 10 court hearing, the SEC said it spent thousands of dollars to send three lawyers — two from San Francisco and another from Washington, D.C. — to take a deposition from the billionaire tech mogul.

But three hours before the appointment, Mr. Musk’s lawyers told the SEC that he could not appear.

Mr. Musk, his lawyers wrote in a statement, had urgently traveled to the East Coast a day earlier for a “high-risk” launch of his rocket company SpaceX.

However, SpaceX had reported the timing of the planned launch two days before Mr. Musk’s statement.

And a day before the meeting, he told interviewers at a conference that he planned to travel to Florida for the launch “if the weather holds up.”

The SEC says he did not inform them of these plans.

The government lawyers only found out about the article and the interview later.

They postponed the suddenly canceled meeting and then asked a federal court to ensure that Mr. Musk appeared.

Mr Musk has made two statements since the SEC began auditing his $44bn (£34bn). Purchase of Twitter in 2022. The agency has said in legal filings that it is investigating whether his stock purchases before fully purchasing the company and his statements about those investments violated securities laws.

But Mr. Musk refused to testify a third time, and his lawyers sent a letter to the SEC accusing her of harassment. In October, the SEC asked a court to compel him to testify further.

Mr. Musk’s justification for missing out on the appointment last month “smacks of gamesmanship,” SEC lawyers wrote in a Sept. 20 filing.

They asked U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Corley to impose a penalty on him if he skipped the next session, saying it was necessary to prevent him from “not appearing” on Thursday.

They added that Mr. Musk should obtain written consent from the SEC or a court order to postpone.

His attorney, Alex Spiro of the Quinn Emanuel law firm, responded in his own filing that his client and his companies had cooperated with the SEC in this and several other investigations.

“In this investigation alone, Mr. Musk has submitted hundreds of documents, he has testified twice, his asset manager has testified three times, and other people associated with Mr. Musk have also testified, all without one “To postpone or cancel the appointment of these testimonies,” Mr. Spiro wrote.

Mr. Musk’s lawyers say they also traveled to Los Angeles last month to attend his testimony and “immediately notified the SEC of the emergency.”

The SEC declined to comment when contacted by the BBC.

But in a court filing, SEC attorney Robin Andrews urged U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Corley to take a hard line against the billionaire.

“The court must make it clear that game-playing and delaying tactics must stop,” Mr. Andrews wrote.