International

Musk to testify at trial over his $50 bn Tesla compensation

Photo: Hoy Dinero

| By AFP | Juliette Michel |

Tesla tycoon Elon Musk will take the stand on Wednesday as part of a trial over his $50 billion pay package as CEO of the electric car giant.

Musk will testify in the same Delaware court where he faced a lawsuit by Twitter to make sure he went through with his buyout of the social platform.

The $44 billion purchase of Twitter has put Musk under a deluge of scrutiny after he conducted massive layoffs, scared advertisers and opened the platform to fake accounts.

The unrelated Tesla case is based on a complaint by shareholder Richard Tornetta, who accused Musk and the company’s board of directors of failing in their duties when they authorized the pay plan.

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Tornetta alleges that Musk dictated his terms to directors who were not sufficiently independent from their star CEO to object to a package worth around $51 billion at recent share prices.

The Tesla shareholder accuses Musk of “unjustified enrichment” and asked for the annulment of a pay program that helped make the entrepreneur the richest man in the world.

According to a legal filing, Musk earned the equivalent of $52.4 billion in Tesla stock options over four and a half years after virtually all of the company’s targets were met.

When the plan was adopted it was valued at a total of $56 billion.

The non-jury trial began Monday with testimony from Ira Ehrenpreis, head of the compensation committee on Tesla’s board of directors, who said the targets set were “extraordinarily ambitious and difficult”.

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Ehrenpreis argued that the board wanted to spur Musk to focus on Tesla at a time when the company was still struggling to gain traction.

‘Highly unusual’

The trial will run through Friday and is being presided over by Judge Kathaleen McCormick, the same judge who was to preside over the Twitter case.

There is no deadline for her decision which could take months.

It’s “highly unusual” for this kind of case to be brought to trial, Jill Fisch, Law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told AFP.

“There aren’t all that many successful challenges to executive compensation (as) the courts have typically treated this as a business decision,” she added.

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But the court found in this case that Musk’s ownership of about 22 percent of Tesla and his role as CEO “could have an undue impact” on the board and other shareholders, she noted.

Musk canceled an in-person appearance on Sunday at an event on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali to be in court.

Asked why he had not traveled to the tropical Indonesian island, the new Twitter boss joked that his “workload has recently increased quite a lot” after his takeover of the social media giant.

International

MEPs Approve Plan That Could Fast-Track Rejection of Some Asylum Claims

With an overwhelming majority of 408 votes in favor, the European Parliament backed the creation of a list of safe countries of origin for asylum seekers.

People coming from Colombia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia who apply for asylum in the European Union could see their requests rejected on the grounds that the bloc’s 27 member states consider those nations safe. Applicants would have to prove their individual circumstances, showing evidence of persecution or specific risks if they were to return.

At the same time, while their applications are processed or their return is arranged, migrants could be transferred to third countries outside the EU if the bloc has an agreement with them, if the individuals previously transited through those nations, or if they have family or cultural ties there. The measure provides legal cover for the creation of processing centers beyond EU territory, similar to an initiative previously pursued by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Albania.

Tuesday’s vote reflects the tightening of European migration policy in recent years, despite asylum applications having fallen by more than 20% last year and the issue not ranking among citizens’ top concerns, according to recent surveys.

International

Chile Unveils Latam-GPT to Give Latin America Its Own AI Model

Chile on Tuesday launched Latam-GPT, an initiative aimed at providing Latin America with its own artificial intelligence model in a field largely dominated by U.S. companies, while seeking to reduce biases identified in existing systems.

The project is led by Chile’s National Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA), a private corporation funded with public resources.

Latam-GPT is backed by universities, foundations, libraries, government agencies and civil society organizations from across the region, including Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and Argentina.

“Thanks to Latam-GPT we are positioning the region as an active and sovereign player in the economy of the future. We are at the table — we are not on the menu,” President Gabriel Boric said during the presentation of the initiative on national broadcaster Televisión Nacional.

The tool aims to break down prejudices and prevent Latin America from being portrayed as a single, uniform reality, Chile’s science minister, Aldo Valle, told AFP.

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The region, he added, “cannot be merely a user or passive recipient of artificial intelligence systems. That could result in losing a significant part of our traditions.”

Despite its name, the initiative is not an interactive chatbot. Instead, it is a large regional database trained on Latin American information that can be used to develop technological applications, the minister explained.

International

Mexico Rises Slightly to 141st in Global Corruption Perceptions Index 2025

Mexico improved by one point in its rating and climbed to 141st place in the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) published Tuesday by the anti-corruption organization Transparency International, which gave the country a score of 27 out of 100.

The slight increase in score comes after Mexico recorded its lowest CPI result in history in 2024 during the final year of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term, also scoring 27 out of 100. The CPI is widely regarded as the main global measure of perceived public-sector corruption, where 0 represents high corruption and 100 denotes very low corruption.

Within the region, Mexico ranks above only Guatemala (26), Paraguay (24), Honduras (22), Haiti (16), Nicaragua (14) and Venezuela (10), but trails key economic peers such as Brazil (35) and Chile (63).

Among the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Mexico ranks last. In the G20 grouping, it sits in the penultimate position, ahead of only Russia. Experts say Mexico’s persistently low score reflects ongoing challenges in curbing corruption and protecting public funds.

Transparency International’s report also highlights structural corruption issues that have allowed organized crime to infiltrate politics and weaken governance, as well as risks to journalists covering corruption.