According to a document filed with the SEC, the American stock market watchdog, and published on the latter's website on Tuesday, the multi-billionaire dumped approximately 7.9 million Tesla shares between the 5th and the 9th. august.

In a tweet published overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, he explained that he wanted to "avoid an emergency sale of Tesla securities", in the scenario - which he hopes is "improbable" -, where he would be forced to buy Twitter and would lose the support of some of its financial partners.

Elon Musk on Saturday challenged the boss of Twitter to publicly debate and prove the share of fake accounts on the social network, a point of disagreement put forward by the multi-billionaire to withdraw his purchase offer, launching a legal battle.

Elon Musk had signed a $ 44 billion agreement in April to buy the social network, before breaking it unilaterally in early July.

Elon Musk pledged to offer $54.20 per Twitter share.

But he now believes that Twitter lied about the proportion of automated accounts and spam on its platform, and even claims that the social network has "frauded", by deliberately increasing the number of monetizable accounts.

- 8.5 billion already sold -

In April, the boss of Tesla had already sold some $8.5 billion worth of shares in his automotive group to prepare for the acquisition of the social network.

At the time Elon Musk had however assured that there would be no other sales of Tesla titles.

The multi-billionaire is now challenging Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to "publicly debate the percentage of fake accounts" on the network by asking him to "prove to the public that Twitter has less than 5% fake or unwanted daily users ".

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The legal battle, it is launched: a trial must open on October 17 before the Delaware Court of Chancery, a court specializing in business law, and last five days.

As soon as the takeover agreement was broken, Twitter indeed sued the richest man on the planet, to force him to honor his promise.

Elon Musk counterattacked in the same court, with a complaint in which he asks the court to release him from the agreement and order Twitter to pay him damages.

The chances that he will get out of it by paying only the indemnities for breaking the agreement (one billion dollars), or that he will be declared in his right, are considered very low by the experts.

The shareholders of Twitter must meet on September 13 to authorize or not this acquisition, which would represent a substantial added value for the shareholders.

Between the general decline in the stock market in recent months, the decline in social media advertising revenue linked to the economic situation and public criticism from Elon Musk, Twitter's stock had collapsed to around $32 on July 11.

At the close Tuesday evening, Twitter action ended at 42.83 dollars down 0.26% and Tesla down 2.44% to 850 dollars.

The automotive group published solid second quarter results at the end of July, with a profit of 2.3 billion dollars over the period, almost twice as much as in the second quarter of last year.

But for the first time since the start of 2021, its profits did not rise to a new record.

And its turnover, at 16.9 billion dollars, also disappointed.

© 2022 AFP