May 4 (Reuters) – Elon Musk settled the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil lawsuit accusing the world’s richest person of waiting too long in 2022 to disclose his initial purchases of Twitter, now known as X.
A trust in Musk’s name will pay a $1.5 million civil penalty, without admitting wrongdoing. Musk won’t have to give up any money he allegedly saved from the delay.
The settlement was disclosed on Monday in the Washington, D.C., federal court.
In its January 2025 lawsuit, the SEC said Musk’s 11-day delay in revealing his initial 5% Twitter stake in late March and early April 2022 let him buy more than $500 million of shares at artificially low prices.
The SEC had argued that Musk should pay a civil fine and repay the $150 million he allegedly saved at the expense of unsuspecting investors.
Musk called the delay inadvertent, and accused the SEC of violating his free speech rights by targeting him. He completed the $44 billion Twitter purchase in October 2022.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by David Gaffen)
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