Tesla faces criminal probe over Elon Musk’s ‘funding secured’ tweet: Report

Tesla CEO Elon
Musk.
Evan Vucci/AP
Images

• Tesla is
  facing a criminal probe from the US attorney’s office in the
  Northern District of California over CEO Elon
  Musk‘s statements about taking Tesla private, Bloomberg
  reports.
• Tesla
  and the US attorney’s office in the Northern District of
  California did not immediately respond to requests for
  comment.
• According to Bloomberg, the probe was opened last month
  after Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private
  and had the “funding secured” to do so.
• The investigation is reportedly at an early stage, and
  criminal probes do not necessarily lead to enforcement
  actions.

Tesla is facing a criminal probe from the US attorney’s office in
the Northern District of California over CEO Elon Musk’s
statements about taking Tesla private,
Bloomberg reports.

Tesla and the US attorney’s office in the Northern District of
California did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to Bloomberg, the probe was opened last month after
Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private and had
the “funding secured” to do so. The investigation is reportedly
at an early stage, and criminal probes do not necessarily lead to
enforcement actions.

Musk attracted
controversy in August over his statements
about wanting to take Tesla private, which raised questions about
the certainty of funding Musk referenced in his “funding secured”
tweet and where exactly that funding would come from. Subsequent

news reports and
statements from Musk suggested that he may not have had
legally-binding agreements in place to finance a go-private deal
at the time he published the tweet. Fox
Business and The New York Times reported
that the SEC had sent
subpoenas to Tesla concerning Tesla’s plans
to explore going private and Musk’s statements about the process.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the
agency had been investigating how the company communicated
production issues it faced with its Model 3 sedan before Musk’s
tweets about going private.

Two weeks after saying he was considering taking Tesla
private, Musk said
it will remain
a public company. Though he said in a post on Tesla’s website
that he believed there was “more
than enough funding” to complete a
go-private deal, he said the process of going private could
create distractions for the company and problems for its current
investors, some of whom had told Musk they would prefer Tesla
remain public, he said.

Read Bloomberg’s full story
here.

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