(Reuters) -Twitter Inc agreed in June to pay about $7 million to the whistleblower whose allegations will be part of Elon Musk’s case against the company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The whistleblower, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who was fired by Twitter in January and was the company’s security head, last month accused the social media firm of falsely claiming it had a solid security plan and making misleading statements about its defenses against hackers and spam accounts.
Zatko will meet the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee on Sept. 13 to discuss the allegations.
The settlement was completed days before Zatko filed his whistleblower complaint in July, according to the WSJ report. (https://on.wsj.com/3L3uRb1)
As part of the settlement, Zatko agreed to a nondisclosure agreement that forbids him from speaking publicly about his time at Twitter or disparaging the company, the WSJ said.
The confidential June settlement was related to Zatko’s lost compensation and followed monthslong mediation over tens of millions of dollars in potential pay, the WSJ reported.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Musk is engaged in a head-on legal battle with Twitter over his offer to buy the company for $44 billion after he changed course to drop the deal saying the social media firm had misled him about the number of bots and fake accounts on the site.
(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
