The US Securities and Exchange Commission, which is investigating whether Elon Musk broke securities laws as he bought Twitter shares before purchasing the social media platform, is seeking to force the billionaire to testify.
The Wall Street regulator said on Thursday that Mr Musk failed to appear to testify last month as requested, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
The agency is reviewing Mr Musk’s statements and disclosures about the stock transactions, according to a filing by the agency in federal court in San Francisco.
“The SEC has already taken Mr Musk’s testimony multiple times in this misguided investigation – enough is enough,” Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Mr Musk, said in a statement.
The SEC began its investigation in April 2022 and has requested thousands of documents from Mr Musk and other parties, the agency said.
The billionaire has already sent hundreds of documents and testified twice in July 2022, according to the filing, which described a continuing, non-public investigation.
In a statement, the SEC said it was seeking Mr “Musk’s testimony to obtain information not already in the SEC’s possession that is relevant to its legitimate and lawful investigation”.
Mr Musk and the SEC have a long-running feud that dates back to his 2018 tweet that he planned to take his electric car maker Tesla private and had secured funding.
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'Young girls thinking of big ideas'
Words come easy for aspiring writer Afra Al Muhairb. The business side of books, on the other hand, is entirely foreign to the 16-year-old Emirati. So, she followed her father’s advice and enroled in the Abu Dhabi Education Council’s summer entrepreneurship course at Abu Dhabi University hoping to pick up a few new skills.
“Most of us have this dream of opening a business,” said Afra, referring to her peers are “young girls thinking of big ideas.”
In the three-week class, pupils are challenged to come up with a business and develop an operational and marketing plan to support their idea. But, the learning goes far beyond sales and branding, said teacher Sonia Elhaj.
“It’s not only about starting up a business, it’s all the meta skills that goes with it -- building self confidence, communication,” said Ms Elhaj. “It’s a way to coach them and to harness ideas and to allow them to be creative. They are really hungry to do this and be heard. They are so happy to be actually doing something, to be engaged in creating something new, not only sitting and listening and getting new information and new knowledge. Now they are applying that knowledge.”
Afra’s team decided to focus their business idea on a restaurant modelled after the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Each level would have a different international cuisine and all the meat would be halal. The pupils thought of this after discussing a common problem they face when travelling abroad.
“Sometimes we find the struggle of finding halal food, so we just eat fish and cheese, so it’s hard for us to spend 20 days with fish and cheese,” said Afra. “So we made this tower so every person who comes – from Africa, from America – they will find the right food to eat.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana
Rating: 4.5/5
Stormy seas
Weather warnings show that Storm Eunice is soon to make landfall. The videographer and I are scrambling to return to the other side of the Channel before it does. As we race to the port of Calais, I see miles of wire fencing topped with barbed wire all around it, a silent ‘Keep Out’ sign for those who, unlike us, aren’t lucky enough to have the right to move freely and safely across borders.
We set sail on a giant ferry whose length dwarfs the dinghies migrants use by nearly a 100 times. Despite the windy rain lashing at the portholes, we arrive safely in Dover; grateful but acutely aware of the miserable conditions the people we’ve left behind are in and of the privilege of choice.
Mobile phone packages comparison
