Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said in an email this week that he was pleased that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating short-sellers, while slamming the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for that.
”I’m very encouraged by the Justice Department’s investigation of short sellers, which is supposed to be something the SEC does, but oddly they didn’t,” Musk told CNBC in an email Tuesday.
The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly investigating two investors who had shorted Tesla’s stock, while the SEC has been scrutinizing Tesla, sparking a vicious legal battle between the company and regulators. In 2018, Musk mocked the SEC as the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission” (SEC).
The SEC also recently sent a letter to a federal judge in response to Musk’s earlier allegations that the agency had “broken promises” and had been harassing Tesla with various investigations. The SEC also charged Musk with fraud in 2018. The SEC is also investigating whether Tesla properly notified shareholders and the public about the risk of fires from solar panels, Reuters reported.
Musk also slammed short-selling companies in an email, “sophisticated hedge funds often take advantage of small investors through short-selling and complex derivatives, where they will short a company and run a negative publicity campaign to temporarily drive down the stock price and cash out. , and then do it again and again, this situation as you know is ‘short & distort’.”
