Elon Musk has accused Twitter of fraud in a lawsuit filed on July 29, according to a Washington Examiner report.
According to the report, Musk argued that the social media platform’s true value was much lower than the amount he had initially agreed to pay.
Musk had offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion earlier in the year but backed out of the deal in July.
The billionaire said the decision to buy the firm was based on the premise that the company’s business was in good condition.
He continued that his investigations into the valuation of the company showed that the number of bot accounts on the platform was more than the official figure.
According to him, Twitter deliberately gave false information to prop its metrics.
Citing another instance of false information shared by Twitter, Musk’s team wrote that the firm made disclosures that “the platform has 238 million monetizable daily active users but those users who actually see ads (and thus, would reasonably be considered ‘monetizable’) is about 65 million lower than what Twitter represents.”
Musk didn’t stop there. He and his team noted that the number of Twitter users that can be monetized for adverts is even lesser.
“In fact, the majority of ads are served to less than 16 million users — a mere fraction of the 238 million,” Musk said.
Twitter Reacts
Twitter has described Musk’s countersuit as his latest attempt to excuse his failure to fulfill his end of their agreement.
The company noted that it had addressed his latest claims, which they described as mischievous, in their 127-pages filling.
According to the company’s chairman, Bret Taylor, they are fully ready to meet him during their trial scheduled to be held at the Delaware Court of Chancery.
“(Musk’s) claims are factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant. We look forward to the trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery,” the chairman wrote in a tweet on Thursday.
The case between both parties is scheduled to go to trial on October 17.