Musk
Four former top employees of X have sued Elon Musk for failure to pay severance payments. Former CEO Parag Agrawal is among them. This amounts to a total of more than 128 million US dollars (118 million euros).
This was evident from documents filed in the US federal court in San Francisco on Monday. Musk bought X, then called Twitter, in October 2022 for $44 billion.
In addition to Agrawal, Ned Segal, Twitter’s former chief financial officer, Vijaya Gadde, the former chief legal officer, and Sean Edgett, the former general counsel, also want to see money from Musk. The four say they were fired “within minutes” of taking over Twitter. Musk is said to have forced them to leave because they had previously sued him when he tried to get out of his bid for Twitter. Musk is also said to have falsely accused them of misconduct.
Musk subsequently refused to pay out the severance payments they were contractually promised. According to the CEO of “But ‘board-approved business decisions that Musk disagrees with’ are not ‘justified reasons,’” the plaintiffs argue in the complaint.
The former directors claim that they are each still entitled to one annual salary and hundreds of thousands of stock options. “This is Musk’s playbook: he keeps the money he owes other people, forcing them to sue him,” the former managers said in the 39-page indictment.
Since his takeover, Musk says he has fired more than 6,500 X employees. That is about 80 percent of the total workforce. There are already several class action lawsuits against X and Musk regarding severance payments. The company denies all responsibility. X was also previously sued for failing to pay a former PR agency, landlords, vendors and consultants.
