The World’s richest man, Elon Musk moved to terminate his pre-agreed deal to buy Twitter on Friday. This is the latest unexpected twist in the purchase process that has astounded Twitter executives and other corporate observers.

Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder and turned down a seat on the board before he started negotiations to buy the social media platform. There were already doubts about following through with the purchase of the platform from Musk’s end and what is certain to follow is a legal battle that could draw out for a long period when you factor in who and how much was to be involved in the deal.

A lawyer representing Elon had filed a statement with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission stating that the reason for Musk not wanting to purchase Twitter any longer is that Twitter was in material breach of the agreement between the two parties and that Twitter had made false and misleading statements during the process of their negotiations.

Musk claims that Twitter did not provide him with complete and accurate information on the presence of spam accounts on the social media platform. During the negotiations, he had earlier stated that the deal was paused until Twitter had provided him with the complete data, which had stated that spam accounts made up less than 5% of the total Twitter user base.

In the filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk’s legal team said that Elon had sought that data to make the necessary assessment of the total presence of the fake accounts but Twitter has knowingly deprived him of that information.

They did this by refusing to honor Musk’s requests, sometimes rejecting the request for unjustifiable reasons and sometimes claiming to comply but then releasing unusable information to Elon Musk’s team.

Elon Musk also said he wanted out of the deal because Twitter had recently fired some of its senior board members and up to a third of its talent acquisition team. This process had breached the obligation to preserve the components of Twitter’s current business model.

Twitter has also announced that they will be seeking legal action to force Elon Musk to complete the purchase and honor the agreement.

Featured image source: deadline.com