NEW YORK – Four ex-Twitter executives, including former chief executive officer Parag Agrawal, sued company owner Elon Musk for allegedly stiffing them on more than US$128 million ($172 million) in severance payments after they were ousted from the company.
The former top officials said Mr Musk showed “special ire” toward them after he took over the social media platform in 2022, publicly vowing to withhold their severance payments to recoup about US$200 million from the US$44 billion deal. This is according to a lawsuit filed on March 4 in federal court in northern California.
Twitter, which Mr Musk renamed X, has been accused of numerous labour and workplace violations in multiple suits, including failing to give severance pay to thousands of workers laid off in the months after the takeover. The company also was accused in a raft of suits of failing to pay millions of dollars owed to vendors and landlords while purportedly trying to stay financially solvent.
“Under Musk’s control, Twitter has become a scofflaw, stiffing employees, landlords, vendors, and others. Musk doesn’t pay his bills, believes the rules don’t apply to him, and uses his wealth and power to run roughshod over anyone who disagrees with him,” lawyers for Mr Agrawal and the other ex-executives said in the 38-page complaint.
As soon as he took over Twitter, Mr Musk fired several other top-ranking executives in addition to Mr Agrawal: Ms Vijaya Gadde, who was the company’s top legal and policy official; Mr Ned Segal, the chief financial officer; and Mr Sean Edgett, Twitter’s general counsel.
The dismissals were unsurprising at the time. All of those executives had been key players for Twitter in the company’s lawsuit in the summer of 2022 aimed at forcing Mr Musk to consummate his purchase of the platform after he tried to back out.
Each of the executives was due to receive substantial payouts as part of Mr Musk’s agreement to buy the company, which included language that would expedite their unvested stock awards. Mr Agrawal alone was set to get roughly US$50 million in severance payouts.
In October, Mr Agrawal, Ms Gadde and other former executives won a ruling from a Delaware judge requiring X to pay US$1.1 million in legal expenses they incurred while they worked for the company.
In early December, X failed in court-ordered mediation to resolve claims by thousands of former Twitter employees who say they were cheated of severance pay.
Also in December, a San Francisco judge rejected X’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by employees claiming they were denied 2022 bonuses, despite being promised in the months leading up to Mr Musk’s acquisition that they would be paid 50 per cent of their target amounts. BLOOMBERG
