Billionaire Elon Musk has accused Twitter of breaching the terms of his $44 billion acquisition of the microblogging service.
Through his lawyers, they warned in a letter on Monday that Musk has repeatedly asked for the information since May 9, to facilitate the evaluation of random and spam accounts on his company’s platform.
“Musk believes Twitter is transparently refusing to comply with its obligations under the merger agreement, which is causing further suspicion that the company is withholding the requested data,” according to the letter.
This is a material breach of Twitter’s obligations under the merger agreement and Mr. Musk reserves all rights arising therefrom, including his right not to complete the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” the letter added.
Twitter itself estimates that spam accounts represent less than 5% of its user base. CEO of Twitter Parag Agrawal confirmed that the service locks more than half a million unwanted accounts every day, most of them before users see them.
Agrawal cautioned that estimates of the number of spam accounts by outsiders could not be taken seriously.
The CEO of Tesla has been trying since mid-May to confirm an issue related to Twitter’s alleged erroneous estimates of the number of spam and fake accounts used on the platform, announcing the suspension of the acquisition deal as a result.
However, from Twitter’s point of view, Musk cannot unilaterally suspend the agreement, and the company confirmed in a statement published in Th Wall Street Journal yesterday that it remains determined to proceed with the acquisition on the agreed terms.
It is noteworthy that the question of whether Musk’s allegations give him sufficient reason to terminate the deal could end up being decided in court.
