WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) – Elon Musk made billions of {dollars} by promoting Tesla (NASDAQ:) inventory utilizing insider info, an institutional shareholder accused in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, asking the courtroom to direct the Tesla CEO to return “unlawful profits.”

The lawsuit comes two days earlier than a crucial vote by Tesla shareholders on whether or not to reinstate Musk’s $56 billion pay package deal, after a Delaware choose voided it in January as a result of she discovered that Musk had improperly managed the method.

Musk and his brother, Kimbal Musk, a Tesla director, bought a mixed $30 billion within the electrical car maker’s inventory between late 2021 and the tip of 2022, cashing in earlier than information that will trigger the inventory to fall grew to become public, in line with the lawsuit, which was filed by the Workers’ Retirement System of Rhode Island (ERSRI).

Musk bought the shares at artificially inflated costs by concealing his plan to make use of the proceeds to purchase social media platform Twitter, which he later renamed X, in line with the lawsuit, filed on the Delaware Chancery Courtroom. Musk additionally bought Tesla inventory when he knew that deliveries of Tesla vehicles had fallen far beneath public projections, the lawsuit mentioned.

Musk and Tesla didn’t reply to messages in search of a remark.

The Workers’ Retirement System of Rhode Island holds about 140,000 shares of Tesla. Tesla’s inventory closed at $170.66 on Tuesday, valuing the stake at about $24 million.

An analogous go well with filed on the identical courtroom late final month by Michael Perry, one other Tesla shareholder, accused Musk of insider buying and selling when he bought over $7.5 billion of shares in Tesla in late 2022.

Musk is in the midst of a regulatory probe to find out whether or not he broke federal securities legal guidelines in 2022 when he purchased Twitter inventory.

Tuesday’s lawsuit by ERSRI additionally mentioned that Musk had been disloyal towards Tesla in a number of cases, together with diverting Tesla workers to work at X and inflicting Tesla to start out paying for promoting on Twitter after he purchased the platform.

ERSRI was involved that Tesla’s board of administrators was not doing sufficient to supervise Musk’s conflicts of curiosity, the fund’s basic treasurer mentioned in an announcement.