Featured Image Credit: Fabrice COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
Elon Musk is set to take the stand today after the legality of his Twitter purchase was called into question.
The tech mogul purchased the social media platform back in 2022, rebranding it from Twitter to X.
And the cost of buying up the brand didn’t come cheap as the billionaire shelled out a whopping $44 billion on it.
Since then, Musk is now set to appear at a shareholder trial in San Fransico, California, where he is accused of making fake and misleading statements to bring down the stock price of the platform before making his purchase.
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After agreeing to buy X back in April 2022, Musk made several public statement about issues he was facing with the deal before it finally went through in October of that year.
In one statement that Musk posted to X, he claimed that the deal ‘temporarily on hold’ due to issues over fake account levels.
The tweet read: “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
The shareholders are now claiming that these statements were false and misleading, and that the mogul published them in an attempt to force the stock prices to depreciate prior to his purchase.
In the lawsuit, it claims: “To try to renegotiate the price or delay the merger, Musk made materially false and misleading statements and omissions, and engaged in a scheme to deceive the market, all in violation of the law.”
Musk is expected to take the stand today (March 4) to testify in his defense.
In other news, Musk revealed he expects he will need to pay over $500 billion in taxes during his lifetime.
The mogul, who is currently worth an estimated $852 billion according to Forbes, took to X to write: “I will probably end up paying over $500B in taxes, inclusive of death.”
This was in response to another user who shared a quote from Musk which read: “I am the largest individual taxpayer in history. I’ve paid over $10B in tax. I thought the IRS might send me a little trophy or something.”
Musk previously shared some insight into his net worth, as he is expected to become the world’s first trillionaire in the next few years.
A lot of Musk’s money comes from the value of his businesses including the likes of Tesla and SpaceX and surprisingly, the billionaire lives a fairly modest life - considering his vast wealth - as he is reported to reside in a small home worth just $50,000 in Texas.
