Tesla shareholder sues Elon Musk to return billions in alleged unlawful profits

WILMINGTON, Delaware — Elon Musk made billions of dollars by selling Tesla stock using insider information, an institutional shareholder alleged in a lawsuit filed on June 11, asking the court to direct the Tesla chief executive to return “unlawful profits”.

The lawsuit comes two days before a critical vote by Tesla shareholders on whether to reinstate Musk’s US$56 billion (S$75.8 billion) pay package, after a Delaware judge voided it in January because she found that Musk had improperly controlled the process.

Musk and his brother, Kimbal Musk, a Tesla director, sold a combined US$30 billion in the electric vehicle maker’s stock between late 2021 and the end of 2022, cashing in before news that would cause the stock to fall became public, according to the lawsuit, which was filed by the Employees’ Retirement System of Rhode Island (ERSRI).

Musk sold the shares at artificially inflated prices by concealing his plan to use the proceeds to buy social media platform Twitter, which he later renamed X, according to the lawsuit, filed at the Delaware Chancery Court. Musk also sold Tesla stock when he knew that deliveries of Tesla cars had fallen far below public projections, the lawsuit said.

Musk and Tesla did not respond to messages seeking a comment.

ERSRI holds about 140,000 shares of Tesla. Tesla’s stock closed at US$170.66 on June 11, valuing the stake at about US$24 million.

A similar suit filed at the same court late in May by Michael Perry, another Tesla shareholder, accused Musk of insider trading when he sold over US$7.5 billion of shares in Tesla in late 2022.

Musk is in the middle of a regulatory probe to determine whether he broke federal securities laws in 2022 when he bought Twitter stock.

The June 11 lawsuit by ERSRI also said that Musk had been disloyal toward Tesla in several instances, including diverting Tesla employees to work at X and causing Tesla to start paying for advertising on Twitter after he bought the platform.

ERSRI was concerned that Tesla’s board of directors was not doing enough to oversee Musk’s conflicts of interest, the fund’s general treasurer said in a statement.

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