Hyunjoo Jin and Sheila Dang

(Reuters) – Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:) Elon Musk, Inc’s CEO, has blasted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for bringing fraud charges against them over 2018 tweets he made about the company going private.

He announced a $43 Billion cash offer to buy social media company, Social Media Company. Twitter Inc (NYSE:) Musk vented his frustrations towards the SEC in remarks made at Vancouver’s TED Conference.

Musk was named the richest man in the world according to Forbes. But the agency still “pursued active public investigations.”

“So, I was forced into a illegal agreement with the SEC. Musk said to the crowd, “Those bastards.”

Musk claimed that he felt obliged to reach an agreement with the SEC as banks threatened to end their capital supply if he didn’t. This would have caused Tesla to go bankrupt.

Musk stated, “So that would be like having a gun on your child’s heads.”

Musk said, “I had to confess that I lied in order to save Tesla’s life. That’s all that was necessary.”

Musk and Tesla were each fined $20 million. Musk became Tesla’s chairman and Musk quit. This was to end SEC allegations Musk defrauded investors by posting to Twitter that he had secured funding to privatize the company. According to the SEC, his tweets about funding “lacked an adequate basis” in fact.

Musk was also required to get pre-clearance by Tesla lawyers in order to tweets or make other statements which could have a material impact on Tesla.

The spokesperson of the SEC didn’t immediately reply to my request for comment Thursday.

Musk turned down an invitation from Twitter to join its board of directors last Saturday, after disclosing his current stake of more than 9%. Experts in securities said that Musk had to reveal that he owned a more than 5 percent stake in Twitter. This is likely to lead to regulator scrutiny.

Musk claimed that when he announced his Twitter takeover proposal, he did so because “it is very important to provide an inclusive forum for freedom of speech”. Musk stated that he believed Twitter’s algorithm should remain open-source. He suggested that the source code should be made available to Github (a Microsoft-owned website for sharing software code).

Musk replied that he was able to finance the transaction if asked. If it’s possible, I could do it. He was not able to provide details.