Elon Musk is taunting the government regulators who threatened to oust him as CEO of electric carmaker Tesla just days after he settled a case alleging he duped investors.
Musk jabbed the Securities and Exchange Commission on his Twitter account, the same agency that went after him for an August 7 tweet in which he declared he had secured financing for a Tesla buyout. The SEC alleged that Musk hadn’t locked up the estimated $25 billion to $50 billion that it would have required to pull off that deal, and wanted to punish him by forcing him out as Tesla’s CEO.
After initially rejecting an SEC offer to settle the case, Musk relented two days after the fraud complaint against him and agreed to resolve the matter by having Tesla and Musk each pay a $20 million penalty, stepping down as Tesla’s chairman and submitting to oversight about his communications about company news.
But the deal didn’t prevent the free-wheeling Musk from continuing to speak out about other subjects – a liberty he took advantage of to bash the SEC in a Thursday tweet that indicated he is still stewing about the allegations filed against him.
Musk derided the SEC as the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission” before snidely praising it for “doing incredible work.”