- In 2021, a Tesla employee and a tech industry researcher filed a whistleblower complaint to the SEC with concerns that Elon Musk’s car company may have violated securities law and flouted accounting standards.
- The complaint contained detailed allegations about Tesla’s financials and business practices, including that it improperly categorized repairs and had poor control over internal systems used to capture data that later rolled up to financial reports.
- The SEC assigned one person to look at one portion of the complaint, then closed that ticket a few months later, according to records. It never spoke to the whistleblowers nor followed up on their offers to look at more than 18,000 files detailing the allegations, they say.
- The SEC declined to comment on the existence or nonexistence of the complaint, but said the agency evaluates all tips that are submitted.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, a Tesla
employee and a tech industry researcher jointly filed a whistleblower complaint to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, expressing concerns that Elon Musk’s car company may have violated the law repeatedly, affecting shareholders, employees and customers.
The complaint contained a number of allegations about Tesla’s financials and its business practices, including that it improperly categorized repairs for years and that it had poor control over internal systems used for capturing business data that ultimately rolls up to financial and other company disclosures to shareholders.
In January 2022, the SEC assigned one person to look at one part of the complaint related to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers’ work for Tesla, then closed that ticket a few months later, according to records reviewed by CNBC.
www.cnbc.com/2023/10/12/tesla-whistleblowers-filed-complaint-to-sec-in-2021-what-it-said.html