Company ownership should be public and easily accessible information to begin with.

The list X filed with the court mentions 95 names and legal entities. Some of them are familiar names for Musk-watchers: Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Jack Dorsey, Ross Gerber, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Sequoia, et al. There are 26 entries related to Fidelity, the mutual fund colossus. There’s Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder and one of the richest people in the world, along with Sean Combs Capital (yup). There’s Vy Capital, the UAE-based venture capital firm, and something called Q Tetris Holdings LLC, whose directors seem to be part of the Qatari government. Binance, the global crypto giant which recently paid a $4.3 billion fine to the US government for facilitating money laundering by terrorist groups and sanctioned entities, is listed an X investor. (Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to money laundering violations and is finishing up a short stint in federal prison.)

There are two entries for Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and another for his Kingdom Holding Company, which was the largest outside shareholder of Twitter when it was a public company. Prince Alwaleed briefly opposed Musk’s takeover — prompting some gentle sparring on Twitter — but he soon came around. Given Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s years-long crackdown against dissent and powerful businessmen and political rivals — which included imprisoning and torturing hundreds of prominent Saudis, including Prince Alwaleed, in Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton hotel — it’s likely that MBS controls those shares.

Musk should be investigated, sanctioned, deprived of his companies, and deported.