Elon Musk’s X is suing the ex-Twitter chairman for $20 million in stock

Kordestani served as the company’s executive chairman from 2015 to 2020 and remained on the board for two more years, until Musk bought the platform for $44 billion. He said in the complaint that most of his compensation was stock, which he says Musk refuses to pay.

Lawyers for the former president say X Corp., as Musk has renamed the company, is trying to “reap the benefits of Mr. Kordestani’s seven years of service at Twitter without paying him for it.”

The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco, is the latest in a series of legal actions taken against Musk by former Twitter executives since he took over. In March, four former executives sued Musk for allegedly withholding more than $128 million in severance payments after they were ousted from the company.

X declined to comment.

Before coming to Twitter, Kordestani was a longtime business leader at Alphabet Inc.’s Google.