The Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice are investigating Tesla’s Model 3 production projections, the company says in a filing.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department are investigating Tesla’s Model 3 production projections, the company said in a regulatory filing Friday.
The filing confirms an Oct. 26 article in The Wall Street Journal that said FBI agents were looking at whether Tesla misled investors about production of its Model 3 sedans. The FBI is the principal investigative arm of the Justice Department.
The SEC, which just settled its securities fraud investigation against CEO Elon Musk and the company, has separately subpoenaed Tesla for Musk’s statements about production rates regarding its popular Model 3 sedan, the company said. DOJ prosecutors have also asked for the same information, although it stopped short of issuing a formal subpoena, the company said in a filing with the SEC.
The WSJ said the U. S. attorney’s office in San Francisco was handling the criminal probe.
Musk denied the validity of the article in an interview with Kara Swisher of Recode that was posted Friday .
“The amount of untruthful stuff that is written is unbelievable. Take that Wall Street Journal front-page article about, like, ‘The FBI is closing in.’ That is utterly false. That’s absurd,” Musk told Swisher. “To print such a falsehood on the front page of a major newspaper is outrageous. Like, why are they even journalists? They’re terrible. Terrible people.”
Tesla has previously said it has not received any formal subpoenas from the DOJ, but has not mentioned anything about subpoenas from the SEC.
The news came out of a filing in which Tesla also said it plans to spend up to $6 billion in 2019 and 2020 on factories and equipment.
