A federal judge agreed with me that knowing the identities of Elon Musk's investors is in the public interest.

The question of the Saudi government’s ongoing relationship with X and Musk is essential, especially with Saudi security services still regularly doxing online dissidents — or merely everyday people with few online followers who post the slightest critique — and then imprisoning, torturing, and killing them. There are yet more ongoing lawsuits against Twitter for failing to stop the Saudi spy ring operating inside Twitter and serving up its most vulnerable users to a brutal dictatorship. McKinsey, the consulting firm, is a defendant in one of these cases for its role in producing for the Saudi government a list of prominent Saudis on Twitter — which essentially became a list of targets for regime enforcers.

  • rammer@sopuli.xyz
    27·
    20 days ago

    Company ownership should be public and easily accessible information to begin with.

  • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
    271·
    21 days ago

    The list X filed with the court mentions 95 names and legal entities. Some of them are familiar names for Musk-watchers: Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Jack Dorsey, Ross Gerber, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Sequoia, et al. There are 26 entries related to Fidelity, the mutual fund colossus. There’s Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder and one of the richest people in the world, along with Sean Combs Capital (yup). There’s Vy Capital, the UAE-based venture capital firm, and something called Q Tetris Holdings LLC, whose directors seem to be part of the Qatari government. Binance, the global crypto giant which recently paid a $4.3 billion fine to the US government for facilitating money laundering by terrorist groups and sanctioned entities, is listed an X investor. (Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to money laundering violations and is finishing up a short stint in federal prison.)

    There are two entries for Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and another for his Kingdom Holding Company, which was the largest outside shareholder of Twitter when it was a public company. Prince Alwaleed briefly opposed Musk’s takeover — prompting some gentle sparring on Twitter — but he soon came around. Given Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s years-long crackdown against dissent and powerful businessmen and political rivals — which included imprisoning and torturing hundreds of prominent Saudis, including Prince Alwaleed, in Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton hotel — it’s likely that MBS controls those shares.