The SEC determined that Musk made materially false statements, leading to significant run-ups in the stock price, which subsequently crashed when Musk backtracked. This is securities fraud, and the lawsuit sought a heavy penalty, prohibiting Musk from acting as a director or officer of any public company, permanently. But days later, the SEC reverted to nearly the same settlement Musk had turned down, with a slap-on-the-wrist fine, a little adult supervision from the board, and prescribed monitoring of his tweets (seriously). If you have a CEO this dead to rights on securities fraud, why let him continue as CEO? According to the SEC, Musk was indispensable. In a statement, SEC Chair Jay Clayton said “holding individuals accountable is important and an effective means of deterrence,” but that he must take the interests of investors into account, and “the skills and support of certain individuals may be important to the future success of a company.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-07/elon-musk-and-americas-toxic-cult-ceo
