In a lawsuit filed late Friday, shareholders who accused Tesla and CEO Elon Musek of alleged securities fraud said they had won a critical decision in their class action lawsuit.

Shareholders have sued Tesla for the money they lost after Musk said on Twitter in 2018 that he was considering privatizing his company to produce electric cars at $ 420 a share, saying he had obtained funding for it.

Tesla's trading initially stopped, then the stock changed rapidly a few weeks after the tweets. Musk later said he had spoken to the Saudi State Investment Fund and believed the fund would come at the suggested price. An agreement was never reached. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating and accusing Muska of fraudulent civilian values   as a result of tweets. Tesla and Musk reached a revised dispute settlement agreement in 2019, but Musk is now working to end the agreement.

The damage caused by the class action by the shareholders could reach billions of dollars by paying Musk and Tesla to members of the class.

Shareholders' lawyers said in a statement Friday that Judge Edward M. Chen, who chaired the case, concluded that Musk had dealt with the scientist - in other words, that he knew that when he tweeted, he made false statements about securing funds. This information was disclosed in a request by shareholders' lawyers for an interim injunction against Musk to prevent him from making further public statements on aspects of the case, as he did at a public presentation at TED 2022 on 14 June.

The request for a temporary restraint refers to Judge Chen's earlier decision, which is now sealed because it refers to evidence that Musk's group is considered confidential. "We expect the order to be announced soon," Adam Apton of Levi & Korsinsky, Tesla's chief shareholder class attorney, told CNBC by email.

At Thursday's TED conference, Musk called financial supervision at the SEC's San Francisco office "rude."

Musk also said: "The SEC is aware that the funds have been obtained, but they are continuing an active, public investigation despite the weather. Tesla is in a precarious financial situation." And the banks have told me that if I do not agree to the SEC settlement they are about to implement, the banks will stop providing working capital and Tesla will go bankrupt immediately. So it's like putting a gun on your child's head. I was forced to approve the SEC illegally.

It is not clear why Musk believes he cannot raise working capital for Tesla, but he is confident that he can raise the billions needed to make the company private.

Musk is now the richest man on paper in the world and is trying to take Twitter, his favorite social media platform, and make it private for almost $ 43 billion.

Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, a partner at Quinn, Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, said in a statement to CNBC: prosecuting prosecutors seeking to make a profit and others seeking to prevent this fact from exposing anything that would harm freedom of expression. "

Spiro made the same statement for Bloomberg, which was the first to report on recent developments in the shareholder class. The trial date is currently set for May 31, 2022 in federal court in San Francisco, but that may change.

(Source://CNBC)