Following their termination from the firm, four former Twitter executives - among them former CEO Parag Agrawal - filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk, the company's owner, alleging that he withheld more than $128 million in severance money from them.
According to a lawsuit filed on Monday in federal court in northern California, the former top officials said that Musk displayed "special ire" toward them when he took over the social media platform in 2022 and made a public promise to withhold their severance in order to recover approximately $200 million from the $44 billion transaction.
In numerous lawsuits, Twitter - which Musk rebranded as X - has been charged with various labor and workplace offenses, including underpaying thousands of fired employees who were laid off in the months following the acquisition. In addition, the business was charged in numerous lawsuits with neglecting to pay millions owed to landlords and suppliers while ostensibly attempting to maintain its financial stability.
“Twitter has turned into a scoundrel under Musk's leadership, defrauding vendors, landlords, workers, and other parties. Musk does not 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," Legal counsel for Agrawal and the other ex-executives claimed in the 38-page complaint.
An X representative declined to comment. Musk did not answer an email requesting a comment right away. Along with Agrawal, Musk sacked a number of other high-ranking officials as soon as he took over Twitter, including Sean Edgett, the company's general counsel, Ned Segal, the chief financial officer, and Vijaya Gadde, the company's senior legal and policy official.
At the time, the dismissals were not shocking. All of those officials played a significant role in Twitter's summer 2022 lawsuit, which the business filed in an attempt to pressure Musk to complete his acquisition of the platform even though he had attempted to back out.
A large payout was expected for each officer as part of Musk's deal to purchase the business, which also included a clause accelerating the executives' unvested stock awards. Severance benefits estimated to be around $50 million for Agrawal alone.
A Delaware judge ruled in favor of Agrawal, Gadde, and other former executives in October, ordering X to reimburse them for $1.1 million in legal fees they accrued during their employment with the business.
X was unable to settle the allegations made by hundreds of former Twitter workers that they were defrauded of their severance compensation in court-ordered mediation at the beginning of December.
Additionally in December, a San Francisco judge refused X's motion to dismiss a case filed by workers who said they were not given bonuses for 2022, even though they had been assured they would receive 50% of their goal amounts in the months preceding Musk's takeover. The case is Northern District of California (San Francisco) US District Court v. Agrawal v. Musk, 24-cv-01304.
