New Delhi: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter and fired its top executives, AFP news agency reported. This happened before the Friday deadline to complete the purchase of the platform.
Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal, Vijaya Gadde, Head of Legal, Policy and Trust; CFO Ned Segal are among the top executives to be let go, Reuters reported.
He accused them of misleading him and Twitter investors due to the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.
On Thursday, Musk said he was buying Twitter to “try to help more of humanity, which I love.” Ned Sehgal and Parag Agrawal were at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco when the deal was struck and were escorted away, the sources told Reuters.
A day before the deal was finalized, Elon Musk visited Twitter headquarters and changed his bio to ‘Chief Twit’.
“Twitter clearly cannot become a free-for-all hell where anything can be said without consequence!” Musk made the announcement in an open letter to advertisers on Thursday.
The $44 billion acquisition began on April 4, when Musk announced he had a 9.2 percent stake in the company, making him the largest shareholder. He said he planned to clean up the spam accounts, and his lawyers then accused Twitter of failing to comply with his requests for information on the matter.
However, in mid-May, Musk reconsidered the purchase, citing concerns that the number of fake accounts on the microblogging site was higher than Twitter had claimed. He then announced that he no longer wished to pursue the $44 billion deal. Twitter argued that the billionaire was legally obligated to buy the company and filed suit.
In early October, when Twitter’s lawyers were set to depose Musk before their trial began, Musk turned around again and offered to complete the deal.
