(NewsGlobal.com)- Elon Musk has been making a lot of noise over the last few weeks regarding his purchase of Twitter, and now he’s making some more noise in regard to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
A recent report in the New York Times shed light on the fact that Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, signed onto an amicus brief that could ultimately prevent the SEC from issuing any gag order. Those orders prevent individuals who come to settlements with the agency without admitting they were at fault from discussing anything about their case.
The Daily Mail recently reported that musk signed the petition that was filed by Xerox’s former CFO, Barry Romeril. The brief is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a deal from back in 2003 he made with the SEC that required him to never talk about the fraud case that was filed against him.
At the end of the 1990s, Romeril and five other Xerox executives came to a settlement agreement with the SEC over allegations that they had inflated earnings at the company by roughly $1.4 million.
As part of that deal, Romeril agreed he wouldn’t ever deny those allegations. He was also barred permanently from serving in an officer role for any public company.
The Daily Mail reported of Romeril:
“He has since argued to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that the requirement he stays silent about the case violates his First Amendment right, and no act of Congress authorizes such a sweeping restriction on freedom of speech. That appeals court, however, disagreed, with Judge Denny Chin writing last year that Romeril waived his right to deny the allegations when he agreed to the settlement.”
Romeriol has decided to appeal that case now all the way up to the highest court in the land. And this time, he’s joined by Musk, who himself came to an agreement with the SEC back in 2018 that ultimately dictated what he could and couldn’t tweet about.
Ironically, this entire situation comes about as Musk and Twitter have come to an agreement for the social media giant to be sold to the Tesla CEO, who plans to take the company private. While the purchase isn’t completely finished yet, it’s well on its way.
The SEC filing states that if the purchase doesn’t go through as planned, Musk would be forced to pay a termination fee of $1 billion. The filing also states that a deal must be completed by October 24 of this year at the latest, otherwise Twitter has a right to terminate the agreement.
Stockholders of the social media giant also must sign onto the agreement, but they don’t have a ton of power to do so. One of the limited cases in which shareholders could nix a deal with Musk would be if a better deal were to come along.
But, that’s probably not likely, meaning it’s only a matter of time before Musk takes over.
