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Musk countersuit accuses Twitter of fraud over ‘bot’ count

Elon Musk accused Twitter of fraud in a countersuit over his aborted $44 billion deal for the social media company, which he claimed held back necessary information and misled his team about the true size of its user base.

The countersuit by the billionaire and Tesla CEO alleges Twitter committed fraud, breach of contract and violation of a securities law in Texas, where Musk lives.

Musk’s counterclaims were filed confidentially last week and unsealed in a filing late Thursday at the Delaware Chancery Court.

Musk offered to buy Twitter earlier this year, then tried to back out of the deal by claiming the social platform was infested with a larger numbers of “spam bots” and fake accounts than Twitter had disclosed.

Twitter sued to force him to complete the acquisition. Musk responded by filing his countersuit.

Musk’s attorneys argue in the countersuit Twitter “misrepresentations or omissions” distorted the company’s value and caused Musk to agree in April to buy it at an inflated price. They said Twitter’s own disclosures revealed it has 65 million fewer “monetizable daily active users,” who can be shown digital ads, than the 238 million Twitter claims.

The filing also said most of Twitter’s ads are shown only to a sliver of the company’s user base.

In an unexpected twist, Twitter filed its response denying Musk’s accusations before Musk’s own counterclaims surfaced.

Twitter called Musk’s reasoning “a story, imagined in an effort to escape a merger agreement that Musk no longer found attractive.”

BUSINESS

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2022-08-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.newstribune.com/article/281758453056121

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