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Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Tesla CEO Elon Musk following a series of tweets in which he threatened to take his company private and claimed funding was secured. It was later discovered that no formal discussions had taken place and funding was at best uncertain.

According to the SEC's complaint, Musk's tweets caused Tesla's stock price to jump by over six percent on August 7, and led to significant market disruption.

"Corporate officers hold positions of trust in our markets and have important responsibilities to shareholders," said Steven Peikin, Co-Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "An officer's celebrity status or reputation as a technological innovator does not give license to take those responsibilities lightly."

The SEC's complaint, filed in federal district court in the Southern District of New York, alleges that Musk violated antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and seeks to remove Musk as head of the company. The complaint would also ban Musk from being CEO of a public company again.

If successful in its case against Musk, the SEC will have effectively defined some hard limits around how CEOs of public companies can and should use Twitter.

In a statement from Tesla, Musk said: "This unjustified action by the S.E.C. leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed. I have al......................

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