An American judge said that he ordered billionaire Elon Musk to confront most of the lawsuits alleging that he defrauded former Twitter shareholders last year, according to the text of a decision announced on Monday, October 2, 2023.
US District Court Judge Andrew Carter said the fraud charges were related to Musk waiting a long time before revealing to shareholders that he had invested in the social media company, which he later bought and changed its name to X.
The judge added that the shareholders who filed the proposed class action lawsuit may try to prove that Musk intended to defraud them by waiting 11 days after a deadline set by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to announce that he had purchased 5% of Twitter shares.
On the other hand, the judge in Manhattan also rejected a trading lawsuit based on confidential information against Musk, the richest man in the world, while there was no immediate comment from Musk’s lawyer on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
Shareholders, led by the Oklahoma State Firefighters Retirement Fund, said Musk saved more than $200 million by increasing the size of his stake in Twitter and secretly speaking with its executives about his plans before finally announcing a 9.2% stake in April 2022.
They added that they sold shares in Twitter at unreal low prices because Musk did what he was doing in secret.
It is noteworthy that Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022, and in early November of the same year, the company laid off about 3,700 employees, as a measure to reduce expenses taken by Musk, who bought the company for $44 billion.
