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NEW YORK- According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the FBI is investigating whether automaker Tesla has misled its investors with false expectations about the production of Model 3 and other parts of its business.
According to the New York newspaper, in recent weeks, FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents have contacted former employees of the company to question them and ask them to testify as part of the investigation. 39, a criminal case.
The investigations are being conducted by the federal prosecutor's office in San Francisco and have intensified after Tesla recently reached an agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to avoid a fraud lawsuit.
This pact included the departure of the company from its controversial founder Elon Musk, whose messages about a possible departure of Tesla from the stock market triggered the regulator's action.
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The SEC said that a series of messages that Musk had posted on Twitter on Aug. 7 regarding its intention to pull the company off the market was a fraudulent act that had temporarily inflated the value of the shares.
In this new case, according to the Journal, the US authorities investigation is focused on the information provided by Tesla on the production of Model 3, the most affordable vehicle of the brand.
The company introduced Model 3 in early 2016 and announced in 2017 an ambitious production plan to produce 5,000 vehicles a week for this year.
However, the company has great difficulty in meeting these expectations and repeatedly fails to meet the targets set, resulting in much criticism from Musk.
According to the WSJ, authorities are investigating whether Tesla has announced these production projections, knowing that it was impossible to meet them.
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In response to the information, the company said Friday that it had only received a request for Justice Department documents on Model 3 and responded to it.
The company also argued that, from the beginning, it was "transparent" about the difficulties that the car's production would cause and added that the achievement of objectives was taking longer than expected because of unforeseen problems.
This week, Tesla, which never closed a year with profits, announced it had earned $ 311.5 million in the third quarter of the year, compared with $ 619.3 million lost in the same period last year. 2017.
Today, although they have withdrawn momentarily after taking note of the WSJ's information, the company's shares quickly rebounded and ended the session on Wall Street with a rise of more than 5 percent. %.
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