International
Musk to testify at trial over his $50 bn Tesla compensation
| By AFP | Juliette Michel |
Tesla tycoon Elon Musk will take the stand on Wednesday as part of a trial over his $50 billion pay package as CEO of the electric car giant.
Musk will testify in the same Delaware court where he faced a lawsuit by Twitter to make sure he went through with his buyout of the social platform.
The $44 billion purchase of Twitter has put Musk under a deluge of scrutiny after he conducted massive layoffs, scared advertisers and opened the platform to fake accounts.
The unrelated Tesla case is based on a complaint by shareholder Richard Tornetta, who accused Musk and the company’s board of directors of failing in their duties when they authorized the pay plan.
Tornetta alleges that Musk dictated his terms to directors who were not sufficiently independent from their star CEO to object to a package worth around $51 billion at recent share prices.
The Tesla shareholder accuses Musk of “unjustified enrichment” and asked for the annulment of a pay program that helped make the entrepreneur the richest man in the world.
According to a legal filing, Musk earned the equivalent of $52.4 billion in Tesla stock options over four and a half years after virtually all of the company’s targets were met.
When the plan was adopted it was valued at a total of $56 billion.
The non-jury trial began Monday with testimony from Ira Ehrenpreis, head of the compensation committee on Tesla’s board of directors, who said the targets set were “extraordinarily ambitious and difficult”.
Ehrenpreis argued that the board wanted to spur Musk to focus on Tesla at a time when the company was still struggling to gain traction.
‘Highly unusual’
The trial will run through Friday and is being presided over by Judge Kathaleen McCormick, the same judge who was to preside over the Twitter case.
There is no deadline for her decision which could take months.
It’s “highly unusual” for this kind of case to be brought to trial, Jill Fisch, Law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told AFP.
“There aren’t all that many successful challenges to executive compensation (as) the courts have typically treated this as a business decision,” she added.
But the court found in this case that Musk’s ownership of about 22 percent of Tesla and his role as CEO “could have an undue impact” on the board and other shareholders, she noted.
Musk canceled an in-person appearance on Sunday at an event on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali to be in court.
Asked why he had not traveled to the tropical Indonesian island, the new Twitter boss joked that his “workload has recently increased quite a lot” after his takeover of the social media giant.
International
El Chapo’s son Joaquín Guzmán López pleads guilty to U.S. drug trafficking charges
Joaquín Guzmán López, one of the sons of notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, pleaded guilty on Monday to drug trafficking charges in a U.S. court, months after his brother Ovidio reached a similar plea agreement, according to local media reports.
The defendant appeared before a federal court in Chicago early Monday afternoon and changed his previous plea in the case, the Chicago Tribune reported. U.S. authorities accuse him of forming, together with his three brothers, the cartel faction known as “Los Chapitos.”
The group is believed to have continued the operations of El Chapo, who has been serving a life sentence in the United States since 2019.
Guzmán López, 39, was arrested after landing in Texas in a small aircraft alongside cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
International
Venezuela authorizes return flights as U.S. continues deportations amid rising tensions
The arrival of U.S. aircraft carrying undocumented Venezuelan migrants continued regularly despite rising tensions between Washington and Caracas over President Donald Trump’s military deployment in the Caribbean.
Trump maintains that the deployment is part of an anti-narcotics operation, while Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro insists the true objective is to remove him from power and seize the nation’s oil resources.
Venezuela’s aviation authority has “received a request from the United States government to resume repatriation flights for Venezuelan migrants from that country to Venezuela,” the Ministry of Transportation said in a statement .
“Under the instructions of President Nicolás Maduro, authorization has been granted for these aircraft to enter our airspace,” it added.
Caracas will permit two Eastern Airlines flights to land on Wednesday and Friday.
Migration remains one of the Trump administration’s flagship issues. On Monday, the U.S. president held a meeting with his National Security Council to discuss the situation in Venezuela, a day after confirming he had spoken with Maduro by phone, without offering further details.
According to the Venezuelan government, roughly 75 deportation flights have been carried out this year, returning at least 13,956 Venezuelans from the United States.
International
20,000 rounds stolen from german army after driver leaves cargo unattended
The German army confirmed the theft of a shipment of ammunition that occurred a week ago while it was being transported by a civilian delivery driver, a military spokesperson told AFP, confirming earlier media reports.
According to Der Spiegel and the regional broadcaster MDR, around 20,000 rounds of ammunition were stolen from an unguarded parking lot near Magdeburg, in eastern Germany, while the driver was asleep in a nearby hotel. No information has been released regarding the identity of the suspects, and the military declined to specify the exact type or amount of ammunition taken.
Authorities have also not indicated how the perpetrators knew the cargo would be left unattended.
“The theft was discovered upon delivery at the barracks,” the German army spokesperson said.
A police spokeswoman confirmed to AFP that an investigation has been opened but refused to provide further details “for tactical reasons.”
Sources close to the German military, cited by Der Spiegel, believe it is unlikely the theft was a coincidence. They suspect the thieves waited for the driver to stop for the night before striking.
Der Spiegel also reported that the Defense Ministry normally requires two drivers for this type of transport to ensure the cargo is constantly monitored. However, in this case only one driver was assigned, meaning the civilian transport company failed to comply with the security protocols.
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