Who is the new richest man in the world?

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. After the divorce of his parents, Musk spent much of his youth living with his father, and after serving in the military in his country, he traveled to Canada to live with his mother. He was always a freak about technology and at age 20 he sold his first video game for $ 200.

He is the founder of PayPal and CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City. From Tesla Motors, its flagship has embarked for several years a journey in the manufacture of electric cars and autopilot.

His brands faithfully reflect his atypical and dreamy personality. Since his bet on fossil fuel remote transports, Musk has been associated with fighting global warming, one of his brand's successes. He also lives restless with the possible extinction of the human race and an alternative to creating a human colony on Mars.

He even had to endure all kinds of criticism after smoking marijuana during an interview broadcast live in the United States

However, the figure of Elon Musk is accompanied by many other shades. For example, former Bolivian president Evo Morales accused Musk of having financed the coup to which he was subjected after dubious elections that the opposition and the military forces saw as fraudulent. Morales assures that the large lithium deposits were the main reason for his forced exit from power.

For his part, during the attack by the rebel military, Musk had written on his Twitter (in apparent irony) that the United States would strike whoever they wanted. He later responded to his previous message clarifying that his company sources lithium from Australia. Both tweets were deleted.

Precisely, lithium is an elemental material for the manufacture of electric cars that are Tesla's main source of income.

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Tax savings

Another key in the increase in the fortune of the South African-born billionaire was a change of address that he has been carrying out for a few months. The tycoon changes his residence from California to Texas. This move would represent him not paying any state taxes, something that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos also do, who live in the state of Washington and do not need to pay the state treasury.

Although Tesla remains, for now, in the bear state, the headquarters of SpaceX (Musk's aerospace company) is located in South Texas, which is why Musk has also been seen posting several times since then.

Legal processes

The excessive use of Twitter is one of Musk's main enemies. In 2018, Musk announced that he was considering selling Tesla to a private fund. This announcement caused a rise in the shares of his company, which resulted in two lawsuits for considering it a fraudulent advertisement.

As the BBC explains "The yardstick to measure the legality of Musk's tweet is a 1934 law, which prohibits publicly traded companies from announcing their plans to buy or sell securities if the executives do not intend to do so. they have the means to do so or if they simply seek to manipulate the share price."

As the British media explains, Musk revealed that there was such an offer by a Saudi investment fund that already owned 5% of the company's shares. However, the Securities Market Commission agreed with him to resign as chairman of Tesla and to pay a sum of $ 20 million not to proceed with the investigation.

Another legal mess the billionaire faced was a defamation lawsuit for having labeled a rescuer of 12 boys who were trapped in a cave in Thailand in 2018 as a "pedophile". Musk was acquitted in 2019.