Tag: wealthy people

Indian diamond billionaire Nirav Modi loses appeal against extradition from UK | CNN

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London
CNN
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A London court on Wednesday rejected an appeal from Indian billionaire Nirav Modi against his extradition from the United Kingdom to India to face charges of fraud and money laundering.

British police arrested the diamond dealer in 2019 in London over his alleged involvement in a bank fraud that could be worth $2 billion.

Modi’s lawyers last year challenged a court order allowing the British government to extradite the fugitive businessman, citing his mental health and risk of suicide.

London’s High Court dismissed the appeal on Wednesday, saying Modi’s risk of suicide does not rule out his extradition.

Justice Jeremy Stuart-Smith, one of the two judges, said that they were “far from satisfied that Mr Modi’s mental condition and the risk of suicide are such that it would be either unjust or oppressive to extradite him,” according to the court ruling.

“On the basis of the assurances that the (Indian government) has given, we accept that there will be suitable medical provision and an appropriate plan in place for the management and medical care of Mr Modi, which will be provided in the knowledge that he is a suicide risk,” the judges said.

Modi’s alleged fraud first came to light in 2018 when Punjab National Bank, one of India’s largest banks, reported fraudulent activity at one of its branches.

India then issued an Interpol Red Notice for Modi’s arrest and London authorities were asked to execute it. The Indian foreign ministry said in a statement at the time that it welcomed the arrest, and would seek to extradite Modi as soon as possible.

Modi and officials at the bank allegedly issued fraudulent Letters of Undertakings to overseas banks to obtain buyer’s credit, according to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Forbes once ranked Modi as India’s 85th richest man, with a net worth of $1.8 billion.

CNN has reached out to his lawyer after the court’s decision on Wednesday but is yet to hear back.

Modi, who remains at Wandsworth Prison in London, can challenge Wednesday’s court ruling at the UK Supreme Court.

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November 9, 2022
Analysis: Elon Musk owning Twitter should give everyone pause | CNN Business

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CNN Business
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In late May, something unusual happened at Twitter. Shareholders voted to approve two proposals to change how the company operates — and did so against Twitter’s recommendations.

While shareholder votes are often nonbinding for management, these nonetheless pushed for good corporate governance practices. The first proposal required Twitter to compile a report on the risks of using concealment clauses, such as nondisclosure agreements, to ensure greater accountability for the company and protections for staff. The second proposal required Twitter to disclose its spending on elections.

The developments, however, were overshadowed by something else unusual happening at the company. Elon Musk, the mercurial billionaire, had agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion the month before only to begin raising doubts about the deal soon after. The deal to take Twitter private, which was finally completed this week, likely renders the votes moot; Musk will have final say, not shareholders, a power he wields over numerous entities.

In the tech industry, and especially in the social media sector, annual shareholder meetings have long been something of a farce that captures the broader power imbalance in Silicon Valley. Rather than hold management accountable, shareholders typically run into an unbreachable wall of opposition from founders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who control a majority of voting shares at their respective companies.

Twitter was different. The company billed itself as a “town square,” and also operated in a more democratic fashion than many of its peers, sometimes to its detriment. The company’s CEOs, of which there have been several over the years, clashed with the board and left or were pushed out. Twitter was vulnerable to an activist investor, shareholder proposals and ultimately a takeover from the world’s richest man. It was messy, sure. Zuckerberg once allegedly described Twitter as a “clown car.” But at least it was a clown car that partly belonged to the public.

Now, Musk joins the list of rich, white men who single-handedly control social platforms that collectively reach and shape the lives of billions of people around the world. And Musk, who will reportedly have “absolute control over Twitter” according to a shareholders’ agreement, promises to be uniquely disruptive.

In an effort to support his maximalist vision of “free speech,” the Tesla CEO plans to rethink Twitter’s content moderation policies and permanent bans for users who previously violated the platform’s policies, including former President Donald Trump. He also reportedly wants to gut Twitter’s staff. and has already fired several top executives.

Each of these moves has the potential to undo the work of employees who have labored to make Twitter a better platform with “healthy” conversations after years of complaints from users about harassment and toxic discourse. These moves could also upend the many corners of society shaped to some degree by Twitter. While it is barely a tenth the size of Facebook, Twitter has always had an outsized influence over the worlds of media, politics and tech.

That influence now belongs to Musk. There are two vastly diverging views of the billionaire. Many think of him as a generational figure who is a hybrid of Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs and the fictional Tony Stark — an innovative spirit who defies skeptics to build big businesses that better the world. The others can’t look past his history of false promises, erratic behavior and incendiary remarks.

To those in the first camp, Musk serving as the sole decider at Twitter may be cause for celebration. To those in the second, quite the opposite. But both camps have cause for concern.

More than any other figure, Musk has become the embodiment of a level of concentration of power and wealth that would have seemed almost unthinkable just a couple of decades ago.

The world’s richest man, worth more than the GDPs of many countries, is now in control of one of the world’s most influential social networks. One individual now owns or oversees businesses that are shaping the automotive and space industries, rethinking core infrastructure with freight tunnels and satellite internet, building humanoid robots and brain-interface machines and determining how millions connect with each other and find news.

Musk, prone to self-aggrandizement, insists his interest is to aid humanity, but he also insists that he knows best how to do so at each turn and does not seem to take criticism very well. He and his supporters have been known to lash out at detractors on Twitter, where he spends an unusual amount of time for someone running multiple companies. And now, rather than take his ball and going home when countless users criticize him for, say, offering unsolicited advice on how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, he is buying the whole field for $44 billion.

In 2022, many people may be accustomed to the tremendous power wielded by tech founders. Jeff Bezos, a fellow billionaire and Musk’s rival, also owns a rocket company and used his vast wealth to acquire The Washington Post. But Musk isn’t buying a newspaper, he’s buying the news, or at least one of the key platforms that shape it.

It’s a level of unimpeachable power perhaps only rivaled by Zuckerberg, and there have been clear downsides in this sphere. Zuckerberg, whether he was being truthful or not, tried to downplay his platforms’ influence in the 2016 US presidential election only to spend years trying to extinguish scandals related to it. Facebook has since tried to push off its most difficult decisions to an independent oversight board, but the buck still stops with Zuckerberg. The same will go for Musk.

Elon Musk is a conglomerate, and each arm of his empire potentially gives him more leverage, real or imagined, in advocating for the others. Before lawmakers choose to speak out about concerns with Tesla, for example, some may also weigh whether Musk might discontinue offering his Starlink broadband internet system in Ukraine, or whether he might put his thumb on the scale to promote certain content on Twitter that may disadvantage them.

More immediately, however, owning a social network ensures Musk a different kind of personal power increasingly sought by other controversial billionaires, including Trump (with Truth Social) and Musk’s friend Ye (with a proposed deal to buy Parler). It is the power of knowing that, no matter what he says and no matter how offensive it may be, he can never be turned off.

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October 29, 2022
Billionaire dumps Australia netball team in dispute over father’s racist comments | CNN

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Brisbane, Australia
CNN
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When Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart threw a financial lifeline to Netball Australia, she triggered a debate about sponsorships and the role of social and political issues in the sporting sphere. Then she walked away.

Rinehart’s bombshell decision to withdraw a 14 million Australian dollar ($8.9 million) sponsorship deal for the Diamonds, Australia’s national netball team, caught the players off-guard and struck a blow to the future of Netball Australia – a sporting body mired in debt.

The drama engulfing the Diamonds is not new, but experts say disputes could become more common as athletes and fans take a stronger stance on the source of sponsorship money.

Last week, high-profile fans of the AFL’s Fremantle Dockers urged management to sever ties with long-term sponsor, fossil fuel company Woodside, over its carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, Australian test cricket captain Pat Cummins reportedly raised issues with Cricket Australia’s deal with Alinta Energy, for the same reasons.

For members of the Diamonds, the objections focused on racist comments made almost 40 years ago by Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock, the founder of her company Hancock Prospecting.

Rinehart is a prolific supporter of Australian sports teams and typically earns praise for her sponsorship deals. Last year, Olympic swimmer Cate Campbell reportedly said that Rinehart had “saved swimming.”

But Kevin Argus, a lecturer in marketing from RMIT University, said Rinehart’s decision on Saturday to pull funding from Netball Australia was a “lost opportunity” to “embrace the national mood.”

“In Australia, we have witnessed many large powerful companies benefit enormously from positive associations with sport and withdraw their funding support as soon as an issue arises with athletes,” he told CNN Sport.

“The Diamonds athletes raised concerns about being seen to be supporting a legacy of Aboriginal discrimination. Some have expressed concerns about the environment.

“These are major issues today that won’t go away,” he said.

At the center of the controversy is Noongar woman Donnell Wallam, a rising star who is set to make her debut this week as only the third Indigenous netball player to represent Australia.

Wallam had reportedly expressed reservations about wearing the Hancock logo due to comments Rinehart’s father made about Australia’s First Nations people.

During a televised interview in 1984, Hancock said he’d “dope the water up so they were sterile and breed themselves out.”

His words are a dark reminder of racist attitudes toward Indigenous people, and though Rinehart promotes her longstanding support of Aboriginal communities through mining royalties and charities, she has never publicly condemned her father’s statements.

Wallam’s teammates have rallied around her, and when the team ran onto the court to play New Zealand in the Constellation Cup last week, they wore their old uniforms, without the Hancock logo.

In the statement on Saturday, Rinehart and Hancock Prospecting said there was no requirement for the Diamonds to wear the logo during the New Zealand games and they did not refuse to wear it.

The statement said Hancock’s majority-owned mining company Roy Hill would also pull its support of Netball WA, a state netball body, as the two companies “do not wish to add to Netball’s disunity problems.”

Both Netball Australia and Netball WA would be offered four months of funding while they find new partners, the statement added.

Separately, Rinehart and Hancock seemed to take a swipe at the players by saying they consider it “unnecessary for sports organisations to be used as a vehicle for social or political causes.”

“There are more targeted and genuine ways to progress social or political causes without virtue signalling or for self-publicity,” the statement added.

On Monday, Kathryn Harby-Williams, CEO of the Australian Netball Players’ Association told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Wallam had asked for an exemption not to wear the logo and was refused.

“In the end, unfortunately, Donnell found the pressure too much and decided that she would wear the logo.”

But it was too late.

Netball Australia has made no secret of its financial difficulties. Despite being the most popular team sport in Australia with 1.2 million players, it made a loss last year of 4.4 million Australian dollars ($2.8 million).

Netball Australia CEO Kelly Ryan told Nine News the loss of Hancock sponsorship was “disappointing” but a “strong balance” needs to be struck between social issues and funding.

“There is a really important role that sporting organizations do play from grassroots right through to the elite to create a safe environment to have really strong social conversations,” Ryan said.

“But there also needs to be a balance in terms of the commercial realities of that as well.”

In a statement, the players said they were “disappointed” with Hancock’s decision to withdraw sponsorship and thanked other sponsors for their ongoing support.

The statement added: “Reports of a protest on behalf of the players, on environmental grounds, and a split within the playing group are incorrect. The singular issue of concern to the players was one of support for our only Indigenous team member.”

Vickie Saunders, founder of The Brand Builders, says Wallam’s objection to wearing the Hancock logo was deeply personal, and not a matter of a player using their public profile to promote a political cause.

“Her 60,000-year-old culture will tell you that it’s important. Her 200 years of survival, and her fellow Indigenous people will tell you it’s important,” Saunders said.

“She has a very personal reason for not wanting to wear a logo that represents a person who said that her people should be sterilized or bred out,” she said. “This isn’t a new issue for her. This is her life.”

Hancock Prospecting was founded in 1955 and retains interests in iron ore, coal, and mineral exploration, as well as beef and dairy.

The company also funds services for remote and rural Aboriginal communities, including health and education programs, and Rinehart is a familiar face in elite sporting circles.

The billionaire sponsors Swimming WA, Swimming Queensland, Volleyball Australia, Rowing Australia and Artistic Swimming Australia, and recently struck a deal to sponsor the Australian Olympic Team until 2026.

This week, in response to debate surrounding the Diamonds, many of those sporting bodies released statements lauding Rinehart’s dedication to sport.

“Mrs Rinehart’s selfless commitment to women’s sport deserves the accolades of our great sporting nation,” said Craig Carracher, president of Volleyball Australia. Swimming Queensland CEO Kevin Hasemann said he found “the negative characterization in some quarters of Mrs Rinehart’s new sponsorship of another sport regrettable.”

The Australian newspaper also weighed in with an editorial saying there was no room for “cancel culture” – “to sacrifice Mrs Rinehart because of comments made decades ago by her father, Lang Hancock, is a bridge too far.”

The Netball Australia sponsorship deal would have been worth 3.5 million Australian dollars ($2.2 million) per year for four years – an almost negligible amount for a company that posted a 7.3 billion Australian dollar ($4.6 billion) profit in 2021 on the back of soaring iron ore prices.

Kim Toffoletti, an associate professor of sociology at Melbourne’s Deakin University, said for less established sports, it can be difficult to say no to any offer of sponsorship.

“Their livelihoods are on the line … it’s very hard to turn that down that kind of money because that keeps your sport viable,” Toffoletti told CNN Sport.

“I don’t see it as a failure of the sport but maybe a system in which certain sports are economically and culturally rewarded over others, which means that there are many that do miss out.”

Today’s up and coming sports stars are members of Gen Z, born in the late 1990s to around 2010, whose attitudes may differ from the executives running established sporting bodies and big name brands.

Experts say sponsors can’t expect young athletes to align themselves with their values.

“Some of these sports have got very old-fashioned business models, which are built probably around 30-40 years ago in a different era,” Andrew Hughes, a marketing expert from the Australian National University, told CNN Sport.

“But now we put a lot of value on what brands stand for, what they represent. I think we see that reflected in how the athletes themselves think.”

Saunders, from The Brand Builders, said athletes are realizing that protecting their personal brand is more important than falling into line with the values of their sponsors.

“Your brand is actually your most valuable asset because after the game, or after your career, that’s the thing that you get to take with you into employment or other opportunities in life,” she said.

And that’s especially important for players who aren’t earning big money – like netballers – who need to find another source of income when their sports career is over, Saunders added.

Kevin Argus from RMIT University said Rinehart’s response to the debate – to cancel the contract – demonstrates “reactive decision making” that’s counterproductive for a company seeking to win public support.

He said a better option would have been to engage with the players, as a mentor would in a workplace, to better understand their values and how they can work together for the benefit of both parties.

“Exiting sponsorships when athletes behave as normal functioning human beings demonstrates reactive decision making and shines a light on the need for bolder, transformative leadership,” he said.

“When done well, sport sponsorship is brand transforming for both the sport and sponsor.”

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October 23, 2022
Opinion: The chilling problem with Kanye West’s definition of ‘free speech’ | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Kara Alaimo, an associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, writes about issues affecting women and social media. She was spokeswoman for international affairs in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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The conservative social media company Parler announced on Monday that it is being purchased by Kanye West, who was temporarily suspended from Twitter this month for an antisemitic tweet. A statement from Parler’s parent company announcing the deal described West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, as having taken “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space” where “he will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”

In a release by Parler, West said that “in a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves.”

This development means several social media companies could soon be left in the hands of mercurial, mega-rich men who have pledged to promote “free speech,” including the kind of extreme views that got West temporarily booted from Twitter. Elon Musk is currently in the process of buying Twitter, though Twitter said in a recent court filing that federal authorities (it was not clear which ones) are investigating Musk (while Musk’s attorney said this filing was designed to distract from Twitter’s own legal issues).

For his part, Musk has said Twitter should be “an inclusive arena for free speech.” And former President Donald Trump, who was thrown off Twitter and Facebook in January 2021, founded the company that created Truth Social, which describes itself as a “free speech haven.”

If West and Musk go through with their deals, these three social media platforms are likely to serve as ecosystems for conservative thought. This will likely make the views of those who remain on them more extreme — which could have a radical effect on our politics. That’s because when people who think similarly come together, they reaffirm and heighten one another’s initial beliefs.

While men such as West, Musk and Trump claim to promote free speech by not favoring the moderation of problematic content, here’s what lack of moderation really does: It drives away the people victimized by abusive content such as West’s tweet.

A 2020 study of women in 51 countries by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that 38% have been victims of online violence, from stalking to doxxing to violent threats. As Amnesty International and others have found, women of color are most affected. Antisemitic content is also rampant online. A 2021 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that a sample of 714 anti-Jewish posts on five social networks had been viewed 7.3 million times.

When women become victims of online hate, they often “shut down their blogs, avoid websites they formerly frequented, take down social networking profiles, (and) refrain from engaging in online political commentary,” according to University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks.

In practice, what these so-called free speech policies really boil down to is an ugly form of censorship that scares away the voices of people who are attacked by users of these platforms.

West has already described Parler as a place where conservative views can flourish, and nonconservatives are unlikely to flock to Truth Social, given its association with Trump. If women, people of color and others start fleeing Twitter, that could leave it as a platform for conservatives as well. This would likely make the views of those who remain even more zealous.

“When like-minded people get together, they often end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk to one another,” Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein writes in “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can Be Done.” Sunstein says this happens because their exchanges heighten their preexisting beliefs and make them more confident.

So, when conservatives get together on social media, we can expect them to become more far right. And just as Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-show hosts radically altered the political landscape in the 1990s in ways that laid the groundwork for Trump’s presidency, the far-right views nurtured on these social networks could have a huge impact on our country’s politics. It isn’t hard to imagine that the people who commune on these sites could band together to support and elect political candidates who share their worldviews.

We can also expect these male owners to use their platforms to amplify their own views — even when they’re sexist, misogynistic, racist or otherwise hateful.

If West comes to own Parler and Musk takes the reins of Twitter, an already-extant conservative ecosystem will be supercharged on social media. These men’s “free speech” policies are likely to drive away people victimized by hate online. Those who remain in these conservative spaces will become even more extreme as a result of their interactions, which could cultivate a dangerous far-right ideology that has far-reaching effects on our politics.

Just think about the way these owners already post, with Musk recently suggesting China control Taiwan and Russia keep part of Ukraine and West releasing a music video showing a doppelgänger of ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s then-boyfriend, Pete Davidson, being kidnapped and buried. If this is a glimpse of what social networks will look like in the future, we should all be very scared.

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October 18, 2022
Superyacht linked to Russian billionaire mysteriously shows up in Hong Kong | CNN

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Hong Kong
CNN
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A megayacht linked to a sanctioned Russian oligarch has dropped anchor in Hong Kong, amid efforts by the West to seize the luxury assets of Russian elites in allied ports as the war in Ukraine drags on.

The Nord, a nearly 142-meter (466-foot) yacht that is said to be one of the world’s largest, was spotted by CNN on Friday in Hong Kong’s waters, just minutes from the central downtown district. The vessel is estimated to be worth at least $500 million and widely believed to belong to Alexey Mordashov, an industrial billionaire, according to a yacht broker who spoke with CNN.

The yacht, 1.5 times the size of an American football field, arrived in Hong Kong on Wednesday from the Russian port of Vladivostok, according to the Chinese city’s Marine Department. The government agency told CNN on Friday that it hadn’t been notified about when the yacht would depart for its next destination.

As of Friday afternoon, the Nord was seen flying a Russian flag, with the name of its home base, “Vladivostok,” emblazoned on its stern. A few people, apparently crew members dressed in uniform, were spotted on the vessel’s deck.

Mordashov is one of Russia’s wealthiest billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $18.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s down by $10 billion so far this year, according to the wealth tracker.

The tycoon is chairman of Severstal, a Russian steel and mining giant that at last count had 54,000 employees across 69 countries.

The US State Department sanctioned him and Severstal in June, in addition to three of Mordashov’s other companies, his wife and two adult children.

In a statement at the time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Treasury Department was taking further action to “degrade the networks allowing Russia’s elites, including President [Vladimir] Putin, to anonymously make use of luxury assets around the globe.”

But the United States isn’t the only country cracking down. Several superyachts tied to Russian businessmen have been seized this year in high-profile cases around the world, including in Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Mordashov has challenged sanctions against him in European courts. In May, he argued that an EU court should annul the decision to add him to a list of those penalized over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to European Union filings.

“I have absolutely nothing to do with the emergence of the current geopolitical tension and I do not understand why the EU has imposed sanctions on me,” he said this spring, at the beginning of the war, according to TASS, Russia’s state news agency.

Hong Kong may provide some refuge. Reached for comment by CNN on Friday, the Hong Kong Marine Department said that it would “not comment on any individual cases of vessel entry.”

The city requires overseas yacht owners to gain permission from authorities to enter, including showing proof of insurance, according to the Marine Department.

“We note that certain countries may impose unilateral sanctions against certain places on the basis of their own considerations,” it said.

But the government “does not implement, nor do we have the legal authority to take action on, unilateral sanctions imposed by other jurisdictions,” the department added, saying only that it would enforce “sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.”

On Tuesday, Hong Kong leader, Chief Executive John Lee, said the city had “no legal basis” to act on Western-imposed sanctions – referring to the United States– but “will comply with any United Nations resolution on sanctions.”

Lee himself is among nearly a dozen people sanctioned by the US in 2020 for undermining the city’s autonomy and democratic processes, to which he described as a “a very barbaric act” on Tuesday.

“Hong Kong respects the rule of law. As an international financial city, Hong Kong’s regulatory system is on par with international standards. We will not do anything that has no legal basis,” Lee said.

Russia and China — of which Hong Kong is a part — are two of the five members on the Security Council with veto power. Russia has consistently vetoed resolutions on the council in recent months, impeding action on Ukraine.

Severstal did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mordashov on Friday.

MarineTraffic, the global maritime analytics provider, shows that the Nord arrived in Hong Kong this week after a seven-day journey through the Sea of Japan and East China Sea.

It’s hard to know exactly why the crew chose to come to the Asian hub now, said Michael Maximilian Bognier, a yacht broker with Next Wave Yachting in Hong Kong.

But he noted that the port of Vladivostok could get relatively cold in the winter, making it tougher to maintain such a vessel.

“Not [an] ideal climate to keep a boat like that,” Bognier told CNN.

Asked whether the lack of sanctions could be a draw, Bognier acknowledged the current political climate wasn’t helping.

“This could be a reason why she’s here,” he said, referring to the yacht. “It could be a free ticket.”

It’s rare to see proof of direct ownership of such lavish vessels. Bognier noted, however, that word usually got around about top industry sales and said it was common knowledge that Mordashov was the owner of the yacht.

“Running a boat this size is almost [like] running a city or a business,” he added.

The Nord was built by German shipping giant Lürssen.

“This is definitely one of the most iconic yachts,” said Bognier. “It’s got a very flat bow, not unlike an aircraft carrier actually. That’s a very distinctive feature about this yacht. So it’s very, very difficult, let’s say, to mistake it for something else.”

Sky-high carrying costs could make it tough for even the world’s wealthiest to maintain such assets. Bognier estimated that it could range from approximately $45 million to $70 million just to keep the yacht running each year, not factoring in variable costs of fuel or maintenance after any long journeys.

That would break down to an average bill of $100,000 to $200,000 a day.

The Nord yacht boasts two helipads, and would likely have an extensive staff on board, including a full-time chef, fitness instructor, massage therapist, and possibly a helicopter pilot, according to Bognier.

“When we talk about boats this size, these are standard items,” he said.

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October 10, 2022
Elon Musk’s bumpy road to possibly owning Twitter: A timeline | CNN Business

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CNN Business
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A board seat accepted and then rejected. A stunning $44 billion takeover offer with uncertain financing. And a surprise early morning tweet putting the deal on hold, temporarily.

Even by the standards of Twitter, a company that has known plenty of chaos and dysfunction in its history, the weeks-long effort by billionaire Elon Musk to buy the company has proven to be uniquely tumultuous – and there’s no clear end in sight.

Should the deal go through, it would place the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. The acquisition has the potential to upend not just Twitter itself but politics, media and the tech industry. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has repeatedly stressed that his goal is to bolster what he calls “free speech” on the platform, by which he means all legal speech that complies with local laws in the markets where Twitter operates. He has also said he would reverse Twitter’s ban of former President Donald Trump.

But the attempt by Musk, a wildly successful entrepreneur with a history of erratic behavior, to buy Twitter has been viewed with some skepticism from the start. On the day he made his offer, Musk said: “I’m not sure I’ll actually be able to acquire it.” Some have questioned how he would finance the deal, especially as shares of Tesla

(TSLA), which he’s partially using to back his financing of the Twitter deal, and the broader tech sector have declined in the weeks since.

After Musk recently said he was temporarily pausing the deal so he could assess the amount of spam and fake accounts, it prompted speculation that the billionaire might be looking to renegotiate the deal – or back out of it entirely. His actions in the days that followed only reinforced that thinking.

Here is a look back at the many twists and turns in one of the most high-profile tech deals in recent memory.

Musk starts quietly buying up Twitter shares, building his stake in the company. But it would be months before he disclosed this fact to the public.

Musk’s stake in Twitter tops 5%, but that fact is not disclosed until the following month. Musk was obligated to disclose his stake within 10 days of crossing the 5% threshold, but waited 21 days to do so. During that time, he continued building up his stake.

The billionaire begins to make pointed statements about the platform from his account. “Twitter algorithm should be open source,” he wrote, with a poll for users to vote “yes” or “no.”

The following day, Musk tweets out another poll to his followers: “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”

Musk reaches out to Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey to “discuss the future direction of social media,” according to a company filing later put out by the company. The two tech founders are known to have a bit of a billionaire bromance on and off Twitter.

Twitter’s board and some of its leadership team meet with representatives from Wilson Sonsini, a law firm, and J.P. Morgan to discuss the possibility of Musk joining the company’s board, according a later securities filing. Dorsey is said to have told the board that “he and Mr. Musk were friends,” according to the filing.

In the meeting, the Twitter board discussed wanting Musk to agree to “‘standstill’ provisions”,” according to the filing. This would effectively “limit his public statements regarding Twitter, including the making of unsolicited public proposals to acquire Twitter (but not private proposals) without the prior consent of the Twitter Board.”

Musk is revealed to be Twitter’s largest individual shareholder, with a more than 9% stake in the company.

News of the purchase sends shares of the social media company soaring more than 20% in early trading and kicks off a wave of speculation about how Musk might push for changes on the platform.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors. “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” Agrawal says in a post on Twitter.

As part of the appointment, Musk agrees not to acquire more than 14.9% of the company’s shares while he remains on the board. His term on the board is set to go through 2024, according to a regulatory filing.

Agrawal announces that Musk has decided not to join the board after all. “I believe this is for the best,” Agrawal writes in a letter to the Twitter team.

The reversal opens the door for Musk to pursue a greater stake in the company – and frees him to tweet his many thoughts about the company.

Musk stuns the industry by making an offer to acquire all the shares in Twitter he does not own at a valuation of $41.4 billion. The cash offer represents a 38% premium over the company’s closing price on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed that he had become the company’s biggest shareholder.

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” Musk writes in his offer letter. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

Twitter’s board of directors adopts a “poison pill” provision, a limited-term shareholder rights plan that potentially makes it harder for Musk to acquire the company.

Musk lines u p $46.5 billion in financing for the deal, including two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other unnamed financial institutions and one equity commitment letter from himself, according to a regulatory filing.

The billionaire also reveals that he has not received a formal response from Twitter a week after his acquisition offer. He said he is “seeking to negotiate” a definite acquisition agreement and “is prepared to begin such negotiations immediately” — an apparent reversal from his statement in his acquisition offer letter that it would be his “best and final” offer.

Although he is the richest person in the world, much of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, and some followers of the company speculate that it could be challenging for Musk to raise debt against the historically volatile stock.

Twitter announces that it has agreed to sell itself to Musk in a deal valued at around $44 billion. At a conference later in the day, Musk describes his offer to buy Twitter in characteristically sweeping terms as being about “the future of civilization,” not just making money.

At an all-hands meeting that afternoon, Twitter employees raise questions about everything from what the deal would mean for their compensation to whether former US President Donald Trump would be let back on the platform.

Filings reveal Musk sold $8.5 billion of his Tesla stock in the three days after Twitter board agreed to the sale for an average of $883.09 per share. The filings did not disclose the reason for the sale, but Musk appeared to be raising funds to buy Twitter.

Musk raises another $7 billion in financing for the deal. The new investors include Oracle founder Larry Ellison, cryptocurrency platform Binance and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, according to a filing.

Musk aims to increase Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from $5 billion last year, according to a New York Times report, citing Musk’s pitch deck presented to investors. To achieve that lofty goal, Musk intends to bolster Twitter’s subscription revenue and build up a payments business while decreasing the company’s reliance on advertising sales, according to the report.

Musk confirms what many have assumed for weeks: he would reverse Twitter’s Trump ban if his deal to buy the company is completed.

“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said. “I would reverse the perma-ban. … Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t end Trump’s voice, it will amplify it among the right and this is why it’s morally wrong and flat out stupid.”

Twitter confirms to CNN Business that the platform is pausing most hiring and backfills, except for “business critical” roles, and pulling back on other non-labor costs ahead of the acquisition. In addition, Twitter says general manager of consumer, Kayvon Beykpour, and revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, are leaving the company.

Musk tweets that the deal is on hold, linking to a Reuters report from nearly two weeks earlier, about Twitter’s most recent disclosure about its amount of spam and fake accounts. The figure cited in the report, however, is in line with prior quarterly disclosures.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.

Shares of the social media site plummet after Musk’s announcement, dropping more than 10% at market open. Two hours after announcing the hold, Musk says he remains set on purchasing Twitter. “Still committed to acquisition,” he wrote.

Later in the day, Musk says his team is testing Twitter’s numbers and “picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate

Musk tweets out that Twitter’s legal team accused him of breaking a nondisclosure agreement when the billionaire revealed the platform’s sample size for automated user checks is allegedly just 100 users.

“Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100! This actually happened,” wrote Musk.

The standoff over bot accounts continues as Musk exchanges a series of tweets with Agrawal over the issue. After Agrawal carefully explains how Twitter attempts to combat and measure spam accounts, Musk responds with a poop emoji.

Musk follows up with a somewhat more thoughtful question. “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?” Musk asked. “This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,” he added.

Musk announces that his acquisition of Twitter “cannot move forward” until he sees more information about the prevalence of spam accounts, claiming that the social media platform falsified numbers in filings. Without citing a source, he claims in a tweet that Twitter is “20% fake/spam accounts” and suggests Twitter’s previous filings with the SEC were misleading.

Later in the day, Musk posts a poll to his Twitter followers: “Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?” before calling on the SEC to evaluate the platform’s numbers. “Hello @SECGov, anyone home?” Musk tweets, in an apparent attempt to get the regulator to look into the matter.

In a statement, Twitter says it remains “committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable.” Later, the company says it intends to “enforce the merger agreement.”

In a letter to Twitter’s head of legal, Musk threatens to walk away from his purchase of the platform, alleging that Twitter is “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights” as outlined by the deal.

In the letter, an attorney for Musk accuses the social media company of breaching the merger agreement by not providing the data he has requested on Twitter spam bots, stating that the lack of information gives him a right “not to consummate the transaction” and “to terminate the merger agreement.”

Musk moved to terminate the acquisition agreement. A lawyer representing him claimed in a letter to Twitter’s top lawyer that the company is “in material breach of multiple provisions” of the deal over its alleged failure to provide all the data Musk says he needs to evaluate the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform.

“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,’” the letter reads. “This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement. … Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”

Twitter was not having it.

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” Twitter board chair Bret Taylor said in a tweet Friday, echoing earlier statements by the company that it planned to follow through with the deal. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

Twitter sued the Tesla billionaire in Delaware court in an attempt to force him to complete the deal.

The 62-page lawsuit, sprinkled with memes, tweets and a poop emoji, effectively highlighted the bizarre spectacle of the deal from the start. The company paints Musk as a non-serious potential owner — alleging at one point that he has “disdain” for the company, and at another saying, “Musk’s strategy is … a model of bad faith” — while seeking to compel him to become its owner. (Twitter’s board has an obligation to its shareholders to try to see the deal through if they believe it is in their best interest. The dispute could also end in a settlement.)

Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk over his move to terminate their $44 billion acquisition agreement will go to trial on Oct. 17 and run for five days, a Delaware judge ruled.

The decision came after Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, who is overseeing the case, previously ruled in Twitter’s favor that the proceedings could be expedited and take place in October. Twitter initially pushed for an October 10th start.

Musk’s legal team had asked for the trial to take place in 2023. Twitter’s legal team argued it was necessary to expedite the case in order to limit the “harm” to its business and to ensure the deal can be completed before Oct. 24, the “drop dead” date by which the two sides had previously agreed to close the deal.

Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko testifies before Congress in his first public appearance after his bombshell allegations against the social media company were reported in August by CNN and The Washington Post.

In a whistleblower disclosure sent to multiple lawmakers and government agencies in July, Zatko accused Twitter of failing to safeguard users’ personal information and of exposing the most sensitive parts of its operation to too many people, including potentially to foreign spies. Zatko — who was Twitter’s head of security from November 2020 until he was fired in January — also alleged company executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, have deliberately misled regulators and the company’s own board about its shortcomings.

Zatko claimed in his testimony that Twitter is extremely vulnerable to being penetrated and exploited by agents of foreign governments, as well as detailed some of the personal information Twitter collects on users and alleged that the company does not know where the majority of its collected data goes.

Days earlier, a judge allowed Musk’s legal team to add arguments based on the whistleblower disclosure to its case.

Musk sends a letter to Twitter proposing to complete the deal as originally signed for $54.20 per share, citing people familiar with the negotiations. News of the letter, revealed in a security filing the next day, sends Twitter stock surging more than 20%, approaching the deal price for the first time in months.

Such an agreement could bring to an end a contentious, months-long back and forth between Musk and Twitter that has caused massive uncertainty for employees, investors and users of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.

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October 9, 2022