OREANDA-NEWS. Tesla shareholders have called on the court to oblige Elon Musk to pay the company more than $13 billion, writes Reuters. Tesla may receive this money due to the situation related to the acquisition of SolarCity in 2016. Shareholders believe that Musk forced the Tesla board of directors to approve a deal with troubled SolarCity, in which he himself was a major shareholder. In 2016, the deal was estimated at $2.6 billion, but now Tesla shares, which were part of the deal, are worth about $13 billion. Now the plaintiffs want Musk to return the Tesla shares he received.

«The case from the very beginning concerns the question of whether the acquisition of SolarCity was due to the intention to save it from financial difficulties, and whether it was not a help to a troubled company, orchestrated by Elon Musk», said Randy Baron, a shareholder representative.

One of Musk's lawyers noted that the deal was not a rescue of a troubled enterprise, since SolarCity was not insolvent. The head of Tesla himself claimed that the deal was part of a long-standing plan to create a vertically integrated company using the technologies of both enterprises.