Elon Musk Must Return $56 Billion Tesla Pay Package, Judge Rules

"Absolute corruption," the Tesla CEO complained on social media.

Elon Musk’s massive 2018 pay package from Tesla — which was worth $56 billion and helped catapult him to the title of richest man in the world — must be rescinded, a Delaware judge reaffirmed Monday.

Kathaleen St. J. McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled that Tesla, which asked her to reconsider her original ruling in January, failed to prove that its compensation plan for the Tesla CEO was fair. She stuck with her original decision that the company’s board was under too much influence from Musk when it approved the massive payment in the form of stock options.

Shareholders at the electric car company voted in June to ratify Musk’s 2018 pay package. But that effort amounted to an attempt at “flipping the outcome of an adverse post-trial decision based on evidence they created after trial,” McCormick wrote Monday.

“The large and talented group of defense firms got creative with the ratification argument, but their unprecedented theories go against multiple strains of settled law,” she said.

In response to McCormick’s ruling, Musk posted on social media: “Absolute corruption.” He also called McCormick “an activist posing as a judge.”