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Elon Musk leaves the San Francisco courthouse
Photo: Jeff Chiu / dpa
In the trial against Elon Musk for misleading tweets about the electric car manufacturer Tesla, the company boss has been acquitted of allegations of fraud.
This decision was made by a jury in San Francisco on Friday.
The process involved announcements by Musk on the short message service Twitter in 2018, which had triggered strong price fluctuations on the stock exchange.
At the time, Musk had announced on Twitter that he wanted to take Tesla private for a price of $420 per share.
Funding for this is »secured«.
The announcement caused immense price fluctuations in Tesla shares, but Musk later backed down.
It became clear that the financing was anything but secured.
Investors subsequently sued Musk.
They accused the currently second richest person in the world of lying and "artificially manipulating" the price of Tesla shares with the aim of harming all investors who had bet on a falling share price.
Musk had rejected the fraud allegations in court, now the jury followed him in their decision.
Shortly after the court decision, Musk spoke up – via Twitter, of course.
“Thank God human wisdom has prevailed!
I am deeply grateful for the jury's unanimous finding of innocence in the Tesla 420 privatization case.
Read the recently published SPIEGEL cover story about Elon Musk here: Self-Destruction of a Superstar.
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