WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Four former employees of Twitter, now X, filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk alleging that the billionaire fired them without severance pay of over $128 million.
The plaintiffs include former CEO Parag Agrawal, claiming $57.4 million in benefits, as well as former CFO Ned Segal, asking for $44.5 million. The other two plaintiffs are former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde and then General Counsel Sean Edgett.
The lawsuit filed in a federal court in San Francisco said that the four executives were fired by Musk after he took over Twitter for $44 billion in October, 2022.
During the acquisition, the executives sued Musk for trying to renege on his takeover deal, which infuriated the Tesla CEO. 'For their efforts, Musk vowed a lifetime of revenge,' the suit added.
According to the lawsuit, Musk went out of his ways to make sure that the plaintiffs were not able to resign from the company, in order to fire them after the takeover of Twitter.
'Because Musk decided he didn't want to pay Plaintiffs' severance benefits, he simply fired them without reason, then made up fake cause and appointed employees of his various companies to uphold his decision,' the suit claimed.
The plaintiffs claimed in the suit that the tycoon denied them severance, which includes one year's salary and hundreds of thousands of stock options, that was promised to them way before Twitter's acquisition.
'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,' the plaintiffs added.
Similarly, Musk's social networking site, X, is currently facing a lawsuit claiming $500 million in severance to rank-and-file workers, who were laid off after the acquisition.
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