In late September, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk over securities fraud for tweeting that he had secured funding in order to take Tesla private at $420 per share. While Musk settled the charges by agreeing to pay a fine of $20 million and step down as Tesla's chairman, he doesn't seem to have gotten over the incident just yet.
In a new tweet, Musk derided the regulator by mentioning a name that carries the SEC name once abbreviated. He said:
"Just want to that [sic] the Shortseller Enrichment Commission is doing incredible work. And the name change is so on point!"
The statement clearly alludes to short-sellers, who sell a security they do not own on grounds that its price will drop. This enables the seller to make profits by purchasing it back at a lower price.
Musk's latest tweet came after he drew the ire of the SEC over what the regulator called a misleading claim about the electric car maker's stock price. The SEC believed the tweet caused significant market disruption, and went on to charge Musk of fraud and tried to bar him from taking an executive role at any public company.
As part of the settlement reached soon afterward, per the SEC, Tesla will also be forming an independent committee that "places additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications". Bearing in mind that it was a tweet that got Musk in trouble in the first place, it's perhaps ironic that he has apparently taken aim at the SEC using Twitter.
Source: Elon Musk (Twitter) via ZDNet
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