The Elon Musk SEC agreement seen as a decreasing threat of criminal investigation
The Elon Musk SEC agreement seen as a decreasing threat of criminal investigation
Elon Musk's decision to pay $ 20 million to end a civil investigation into his tweets about taking Tesla Inc. privately reduces the possibility of criminal prosecutors pursuing the executive, according to former prosecutors and other criminal law experts .
The Department of Justice asked Tesla for information about Mr. Musk's tweets on August 7, prompting an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission that Mr. Musk and his company settled on Saturday. The result demands Mr. Musk resigns as president and for Tesla to pay a separate fine of $ 20 million.
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
People close to the matter believe that prosecutors are unlikely to move forward with a case now. A spokesman for the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California declined to comment.
A Tesla spokesman also declined to comment.
The Department of Justice's investigation is still in the early stages, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Basing a criminal case on a tweet storm was always "a stretch," said Michael Liftik, a former SEC attorney who works at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP. Prosecutors face a higher law under the law to prove a criminal infraction than the SEC in a civil case. Criminal authorities must show some kind of plan or intention to violate the law.
"The Justice Department looks for things like a malicious intent to cheat, which I do not think is even remotely here," said Brian Klein, a Baker Marquart LLP defense attorney who was previously a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. "It's hard to imagine that the SEC would have solved this case if they had such evidence, and this agreement seems to confirm that it does not."
Mr. Klein added that prosecutors could still present a case if they find evidence to support the criminal charges. Mr. Musk's agreement with the SEC says it is not related to whether other federal authorities decide to bring an action against him.
But the severity of the punishment obtained by the SEC may be enough to convince prosecutors that justice has been done, Liftik said.
"That tweet cost the company [and Mr. Musk] $ 40 million, "said Mr. Liftik. "He loses the presidency, and they also add two new independent directors. That is an unusual corporate governance company. You do not see that in the SEC settlements where they are directly expanding the board. "
The SEC agreement also requires Tesla to pre-approve any of Mr. Musk's statements that could have an impact on the company's stock price.
On Monday, Mr. Musk seemed to tweet something that could be interpreted as minimizing his guilt over the tweet. At 1:22 a.m. local time, Mr. Musk sent his first tweet since Saturday's settlement It was announced, publishing the words "Naughty by Nature", with a link to a music video of a rap group that was presented under that name.
A SEC spokesman declined to comment.
The choice of who heads the Tesla board in place of Mr. Musk will help determine how significant the impact of the agreement is. The agreement requires the company to choose an independent president. That person could be a complete stranger or one of several current directors who consider themselves independent but who have endorsed Mr. Musk for years. A stranger would probably have a better chance to buffer Musk's influence.
Mr. Musk and Tesla resolved the SEC's claims on Saturday, two days after withdrawing from an agreement that had already been approved by the agency's commissioners, according to people familiar with the matter. People said that the SEC was frustrated by the fact that Musk had moved away from the first deal, which demanded that he pay about 10 million dollars and stop being president for two years.
After the talks melted on Thursday, regulators filed a lawsuit against Musk in Manhattan federal court. To end the demand, the SEC demanded a higher fine of $ 20 million and the suspension of another year of serving as president of Tesla, the people said.
-Tim Higgins, Susan Pulliam and Aruna Viswanatha contributed to this article.
Write to Dave Michaels in dave.michaels@wsj.com
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',
'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq('init', '369524843414444');
fbq('track', 'PageView');
.
SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario