The billionaire entrepreneur says he had funding to take Tesla private in 2018 and that he was forced to accept terms of settlement with securities regulator.
and take it private. That triggered an additional response from Musk that included referring to SEC regulators as “bastards.” Although he and Tesla each agreed to pay the regulator $20 million fines for his seemingly false “funding secured” tweet in September 2018 and Musk gave up his role as company chairman, he said today he was coerced into that settlement.
“Funding was actually secured. I want to be clear about that. It’s maybe a good opportunity to clarify that,” Musk said in the interview. “I don't mean to blame everyone at the SEC but certainly the San Francisco office, because the SEC knew that funding was secured but they pursued an active public investigation nonetheless.”He did not elaborate on what the source of that funding was. At the time of his privatization tweets, he was inin 2018.
“At the time, Tesla was in a precarious financial situation and I was told by the banks that if I did not agree to settle with the SEC, that they would, the banks would, cease providing working capital and Tesla would go bankrupt immediately,” he said. “That's like having a gun to your child's head. So I was forced to concede to the SEC unlawfully, those bastards. … It makes it look like I lied when I did not in fact lie.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on the matter. The company’s shares fell 3.7% to $985 in Nasdaq trading on Thursday.
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