Elon Musk has terminated his $44bn (£36bn) bid to buy Twitter, alleging multiple breaches of the merger agreement.
Gatekeepers News reports that Musk on Friday accused the company of “misleading” statements about the number of fake accounts, a regulatory filing showed.
The development is the latest twist in the controversy that follows the world’s richest person’s decision to buy Twitter in April.
Musk said he had backed out because Twitter failed to provide sufficient information on the number of spam and fake accounts.
Meanwhile, Twitter said it plans to pursue legal action to enforce the agreement, as Musk faces a $1bn (£830m) break-up fee and a possible lawsuit by opting out.
In May, the billionaire businessman said the deal was “temporarily on hold” as he was awaiting data on the number of fake and spam accounts on Twitter.
Musk had asked for evidence to back the company’s assertion that spam and bot accounts make up less than 5% of its total users.
In a letter, his lawyer said Twitter had failed or refused to provide this information.
“Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple
provisions of that Agreement, and appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement,” the letter read.
Spam accounts are designed to spread information to large numbers of people and manipulate the way they interact with the platform. On Thursday, Twitter said it removed around 1 million spam accounts each day.
Musk believes that bots could account for 20% or more of Twitter users.
