Türkiye’s competition watchdog announced it had decided to fine billionaire Elon Musk, as it said the Tesla CEO’s takeover of Twitter occurred without its permission.
The Competition Authority (RK) said it fined Musk 0.1% of Twitter’s gross income in Türkiye in 2022.
The board added that Musk’s takeover did not effectively violate competition, but the probe still ended with a fine due to the lack of board permission.
It said in a statement that the ruling would be open to a legal challenge.
Musk, 51, made his wealth initially on the finance website PayPal, then created the spacecraft company SpaceX and invested in the electric car company Tesla.
In recent months, however, more attention has been focused on the chaos surrounding his $44 billion purchase of the microblogging site Twitter in October.
His takeover has been marked by chaos and controversy, including rounds of layoffs and some investors questioning if he was too distracted also properly to run Tesla.
Twitter was last week reported to have laid off at least 200 employees, or 10% of its workforce, in the latest round of job cuts since Musk took over.
According to Musk last month, the company has a headcount of about 2,300 active employees.
The latest job cuts follow a mass layoff in early November when Twitter laid off about 3,700 employees in a cost-cutting measure by Musk.
Musk said in November that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.
Twitter recently started sharing revenue from advertisements with some of its content creators.
