Elon Musk said on Wednesday he was making decisions about Tesla Inc, including ending bitcoin payments, without board approval as he defended his $56 billion pay package against claims he dictated terms to a board that favored him. , reports AFP.

Elon Musk defends his huge salaryPhoto: Elizabeth Williams/AP/Profimedia

Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta sued Musk and the board in 2018 and hopes to prove that Musk used his dominance over the Tesla board to create a compensation package that did not require him to work full-time at Tesla.

Musk said he made a unilateral decision to stop accepting the Bitcoin cryptocurrency for environmental reasons. He also acknowledged that the board was not informed before he told analysts in October that Tesla was considering a share buyback of up to $10 billion.

The five-day trial comes as Musk tries to control the chaotic overhaul of Twitter, which he was forced to buy for $44 billion, in a separate legal battle before the same judge, Kathleen McCormick, after trying to renege on that deal.

Tornetta’s attorney tried to portray Tesla as a company fully controlled by Musk, the world’s richest man, who was paid a record salary with easy-to-achieve goals to help finance his ambitions to travel to Mars.

Musk acknowledged that he vacationed with board members and sometimes tweeted about the company without coordinating the messages with Tesla’s lawyer, as required by a 2018 settlement with the securities regulator.

Musk has said he won’t accept a pay plan that would require him to mark a schedule or commit to working certain hours for Tesla. “I work almost all the time. I don’t know what the additional schedule will do,” he said.

Musk, who arrived in a black Tesla and was ushered into the courtroom of the Delaware Chancery Court through a separate entrance for security reasons, wrapped up his testimony on Wednesday in just under three hours.

His successor at the helm was Antonio Gracias, a longtime friend of Musk who also served on Tesla’s board of directors from 2007 to 2021.

The billionaire admitted that he is focusing his attention where it is most needed, and in 2017 it was Tesla.

“So during a crisis, distribution shifts to where the crisis is,” Musk said. “I was completely focused on building the company,” he said.

Musk said Tesla’s explosive growth from the brink of collapse in 2017 was incredibly difficult.

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