By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) -A federal judge on Friday denied the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s request to sanction Elon Musk after he failed to appear for court-ordered testimony for the regulator’s investigation into his $10 billion acquisition of Twitter $44 billion.
U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco said sanctions over Musk’s absence on September 10 were unnecessary after the world’s richest person testified on October 3 and agreed to pay the SEC’s $2,923 travel expenses.
“Because the current circumstances preclude any opportunity for meaningful relief that the court might grant, the SEC’s request is moot,” Corley wrote.
The SEC had sought a declaration that Musk violated a May 31 court order to testify.
It said just having to reimburse travel costs won’t stop many other people from ignoring court orders, “let alone someone with extraordinary resources like Musk.”
Musk said he complied with the order by testifying on October 3. According to Forbes magazine, he is worth $321.7 billion.
The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment after business hours. Attorneys for Musk did not immediately respond to similar requests.
Musk, whose businesses include Tesla (NASDAQ:) and rocket company SpaceX and is the world’s richest person, went to Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 10 to oversee the launch of SpaceX’s Polaris (NYSE:) Dawn mission.
The SEC is investigating whether Musk violated securities laws in early 2022 by waiting at least ten days too long to announce that he had started accumulating Twitter shares.
Critics and some investors have said this allowed him to buy shares cheaply before eventually taking a 9.2% stake in Twitter public, and soon afterward offering to buy the entire company.
In July, Musk said he had misunderstood the SEC’s disclosure rules and that “all indications” suggested he had made a “mistake.”
The SEC also sued Musk in 2018 over his Twitter posts about taking Tesla private. He settled that lawsuit by paying a $20 million fine, agreeing to let Tesla lawyers pre-review some messages and resigning as Tesla chairman.
The case is SEC v Musk, US District Court, Northern District of California, No. 23-mc-80253.
