NEW YORK: Elon Musk was sued on Tuesday by former Twitter Inc. shareholders who claim they missed out on the recent run-up in its stock price because he waited too long to disclose a 9.2 percent stake in the social media company.
In a proposed class action filed in Manhattan federal court, the shareholders said Musk, the chief executive of electric car company Tesla Inc, made “materially false and misleading statements and omissions” by failing to reveal he had invested in Twitter by March 24 as required under federal law.
Twitter shares rose 27 percent on April 4, to $49.97 from $39.31, after Musk disclosed his stake, which investors viewed as a vote of confidence from the world’s richest person in San Francisco-based Twitter.
Former shareholders led by Marc Rasella said the delayed disclosure let Musk buy more Twitter shares at lower prices, while defrauding them into selling at “artificially deflated” prices.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
A lawyer for Musk had no immediate comment. Tesla is not a defendant.
US securities law requires investors to disclose within 10 days when they have acquired 5 percent of a company, which in Musk’s case would have been March 24.
Twitter announced on April 5 that Musk would join its board of directors, but this week said he had decided not to.
By not joining the board, Musk, a prolific Twitter user, can keep buying shares without being bound by his agreement with the company to limit his stake to 14.9 percent.
Some analysts have suggested Musk could push Twitter to make changes, or even pursue an unsolicited bid for the company.
Rasella said he sold 35 Twitter shares for $1,373, or an average price of $39.23, between March 25 and 29. Musk is worth $265.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
The case is Rasella v Musk, US District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-03026.
Elon Musk is sued by shareholders over delay in disclosing Twitter stake
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Elon Musk is sued by shareholders over delay in disclosing Twitter stake
- Elon Musk sued by former Twitter shareholders for waiting too long to disclose his stake in the company
Jailed French journalist files appeal in Algeria’s top court: lawyers
- Gleizes was arrested in May 2024 after traveling to Tizi Ouzou in northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region — home to the Amazigh Kabyle people — to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie
ALGIERS: French journalist Christophe Gleizes, sentenced to seven years behind bars in Algeria on terror-related charges, has filed an appeal seeking a new trial with the country’s highest court, his lawyers said Sunday.
“Christophe Gleizes registered an appeal at (the court of) Cassation” on Sunday, the deadline for filing, his French lawyer Emmanuel Daoud told AFP in a message, declining to comment further.
Gleizes’ Algerian lawyer Amirouche Bakouri made a similar announcement on Facebook.
Earlier this month, an Algerian appeals court upheld the seven-year prison term for the sportswriter, who was first convicted of “glorifying terrorism” in June.
Gleizes was arrested in May 2024 after traveling to Tizi Ouzou in northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region — home to the Amazigh Kabyle people — to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie.
In 2021, he had met in Paris with the head of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), a foreign-based group designated a terrorist organization by Algiers earlier that year.
At this month’s appeal hearing, Gleizes had said he did not know the MAK had been listed as a terrorist organization, and asked the court’s forgiveness for his “journalistic mistakes.”
The court’s decision to uphold his sentence was denounced by the rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), as well as the French government.
Gleizes’s jailing comes at a time of diplomatic friction between Paris and Algiers that began last year when France officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.
He is currently France’s only journalist imprisoned abroad, according to RSF, and French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to work toward his release.
Mother makes plea
The mother of the jailed journalist Christophe Gleizes wrote a letter to Algeria’s president requesting he pardon her son from his seven-year sentence on terror-related charges.
“I respectfully ask you to consider granting Christophe a pardon, so that he may regain his freedom and his family,” Sylvie Godard wrote in the letter, which was dated December 10 and seen by AFP on Monday.
“Nowhere in any of his writings will you find any trace of statements hostile to Algeria and its people,” she wrote in her letter to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
