Elon Musk was “furious”, accusing the US Securities and Exchange Commission of having a scheme to “ban” him

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently accused the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of deliberate harassment to “restrict” his freedom of speech. This involves the SEC monitoring his communications with shareholders as part of the 2018 settlement.

Both Musk and Tesla think filing the lawsuit will end the SEC’s “harassment” of Musk and instead that the court, not the agency, will continue to monitor him, his attorney. Musk said. “The SEC has broken its promise,” the attorney wrote in the court filing, noting that the agency “weaponized the consent decree to attempt to trap and harass both Mr. Musk and Tesla.”

In the court filing, the SEC also has not yet allocated to shareholders the $40 million that it fined Musk and the company under the 2018 settlement. “The SEC seems to be constantly targeting Musk and Tesla because he often outspoken criticism of the government,” said Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk and Tesla.

Alex commented: “The SEC seems to be trying to calculate how to refute all of Mr. Musk’s statements instead of fulfilling its obligations in a public and private manner.” The letter comes more than a week after Tesla revealed that the SEC issued a new subpoena to Tesla in November 2021.

The financial regulator is trying to determine compliance with Musk and Tesla’s revised 2019 settlement. According to Tesla’s filing, the agency is investigating information about “the company’s governance processes in compliance with the SEC settlement, as amended.”

The subpoena came shortly after the CEO polled tens of millions of Twitter followers on whether he should sell his 10% stake in Tesla last November. Most netizens voted in favor. But it turns out that this has been fixed by Musk since September.

In September 2018, the SEC charged Musk with making “false and misleading” statements to investors when he announced that he had secured eligibility to take Tesla private. multiplied by $420 per share. The stock spiked that month, but Musk’s claims so far haven’t materialized.

The price to pay was that Musk was subject to a $20 million civil penalty and forced to step down as chairman for at least three years. In addition, Tesla must also set up a system to monitor Musk’s statements to the public about the company, including on Twitter, blogs or any other media.

In addition, the SEC imposed a $20 million fine on Tesla, and appointed the company to appoint two independent directors. One of them could be the replacement chairman for Musk, provided that person is not from Tesla or its affiliates. Neither Musk nor Tesla have made an admission or denial of the misconduct that regulators allege.

Elon Musk filed the lawsuit just hours after he posted a tweet comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler. This article can be seen as a response to the Canadian authorities blocking cryptocurrency donations in support of a week-long protest against the country’s vaccine regulation. It is worth mentioning that Musk has repeatedly publicly supported these protests.