Billionaire Elon Musk Hit Double Blow

The Guardian reported that the US technology billionaire's "securities law violation" lawsuit has been sent to a federal court in Washington, D.C. on the evening of January 14th (US time) by the SEC. The lawsuit alleges that the world's richest person did not disclose his ownership of 5% of Twitter shares before acquiring the social media platform in October 2022. SEC argues that Tesla CEO exceeded the 5% ownership threshold of Twitter in March 2022 and, according to regulations, he must publicly disclose the information within 11 days. However, billionaire Musk "withheld" information and "took advantage of" buying more Twitter shares at a lower price than their actual value at that time, causing damages to shareholders of about $150 million. "Investors may have pushed up stock prices if they knew about Mr. Musk's buying and interest in Twitter," the SEC explained. When the information about owning shares was announced in early April 2022, billionaire Musk held more than 9% of Twitter's shares, and "Twitter's stock price has increased by over 27%". These are the steps for the billionaire born in 1971 to acquire the entire Twitter for 44 billion USD and rename it to X by 2023. SEC demands that Mr. Musk return the unjustified profits and civil penalties. Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom also criticized Tesla and SpaceX founder as "liars". Governor Newsom's move is a response to tech billionaires blaming the Los Angeles forest fires on the state and local governments' "poor management resulting in water shortages".