Silicon Valley hero and Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be in trouble this time!
According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his brother Kim Balmask to determine whether they have insider trading. If the conclusion is confirmed, it may be a fatal blow for the world-class influencer CEO.
Late last year, Musk launched a vote through social media, asking netizens to vote on whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares in order to pay a huge personal income tax. Because under the new tax plan, billionaires like Musk should pay taxes on their "invisible income," and this tax will be staggering. Musk has said in public many times that although he is known as the richest man in the world, he does not have much cash himself, and all his "wealth" comes from the Tesla stock he holds, so if he needs to pay taxes for this wealth, he can only rely on the sale of Tesla stock to raise cash.
Musk's vote finally came to a definitive conclusion: of the 3.5 million netizens who participated in the voting, more than 57.9% of netizens believed that he should sell his shares, while 42.1% of netizens opposed him to doing so, and finally, Musk fulfilled his promise and sold more than $100 million in Tesla shares on several occasions.
Although this seems to be beyond doubt, the Wall Street Journal reported that the information held by the SEC shows that although Musk seems to have fulfilled his promise and sold a considerable number of Tesla shares according to the voting results, before that, Musk has begun to sell shares, and Musk's younger brother Kimbar Musk, who is also a member of Tesla's board, also sold 88,500 Tesla shares the day before the voting results were released. The SEC believes the brothers may be suspected of insider trading. According to the Wall Street Journal, the investigation actually began as early as the end of last year.
Musk's younger brother, Kim Balmask
Musk and the SEC have long been a pair of rivals, and there have been many wars of words between them, and the latter even cut Musk's Tesla chairman position in 2018 and imposed a huge fine of $25 million. Just a few days ago, Musk also said through social media that the SEC has been harassing him and his company (Tesla) endlessly in the name of various investigations in order to make him stink and weaken his influence on Tesla's board. In response to a related tweet, Musk said he did not provoke the "war" between him and the SEC, but that he would end it. Don't know what Musk means?
It's worth pointing out that, in my opinion, it's really a big surprise for someone like Musk with a big dream to engage in insider trading because he is greedy for money. As the world's richest man, Musk has no reason to engage in insider trading for profit. It is true that Musk is short of money, and in order to complete the grand goal of turning humans into a cross-planetary species, Musk and his SpaceX need a lot of unimaginable financial support, but that is not something that $100 million can solve, so I prefer to believe that, as Musk has previously accused, the investigation launched by the SEC this time is more likely to continue to stink Musk, and it is impossible to reach any substantive conclusions.