“As a result of Katz’s impersonation of Musk, Tesla – a publicly traded company responsible for ensuring the integrity of its non-public financial information, trade secrets, and data – has incurred costs, damages, and losses”, the lawsuit alleged.
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Forbes reports that the Quest Integrity Group has partnerships with major oil companies which include ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron.
The complaint also accuses 10 other unnamed individuals of being involved.
According to a lawsuit filed by Tesla Motors on Wednesday, Todd Katz, the chief financial officer for an oil and gas industry services company called Quest Integrity, sent an email to Tesla CFO Jason Wheeler on August 3rd.
Quest Integrity Group, a Seattle-based oil pipeline engineering and inspection firm, said it’s looking into a claim that its finance chief impersonated Elon Musk in an e-mail to get inside information on Tesla Motors, while calling “absurd” the electric auto maker’s allegation of an oil industry conspiracy against alternative energy firms.
Now Tesla is having its own fight against the oil industry and it’s not one to promote electric vehicles. “This could have resulted in highly valuable information being improperly disclosed”, he said.
Wheeler did not fall for the email’s attempt to procure the privileged information, and Tesla launched an internal investigation regarding the matter. He further said that although the EV firm was able to catch it this time, but they are anxious that something like this might happen in future as well in some other form. “Honest best guess.no bs”.
“In recent years, oil companies have spent billions of dollars on legislative efforts and campaigns aimed at blocking progress toward electric cars and other sustainable energy solutions in the United States and overseas”, the lawsuit reads.
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A Tesla spokeswoman said on Thursday that Mobileye collaborated with Tesla to develop Autopilot over the past three years. The company also says it has never claimed or implied that Autopilot makes cars fully autonomous.
