Elon Musk speaks during the official opening of the new Tesla electric car manufacturing plant in Germany on March 22, 2022.
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Tesla legal head David Searle has left his role at the company, three employees told Bloomberg.
Searle was reportedly leading a probe into a purchase that was authorized by executive Omead Afshar.
Tesla responded to Bloomberg’s story in a tweet, denying Searle had left the company.
Tesla legal chief David Searle has left his role at the electric-car maker after less than two years at the company, according to a recent report from Bloomberg.
The electric-car maker’s verified Twitter account responded to the Bloomberg story after it was published denying Searle had left the company. Searle did not respond to a request for comment from Insider on LinkedIn. Eskin and a spokesperson for Tesla also did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.
Three people familiar with the issue told the publication that Searle left his position less than a month ago and deputy general counsel Dinna Eskin had since taken over the role. Searle left the role after reportedly leading an investigation into one of Elon Musk’s righthand men, Omead Afshar.
Last month, Bloomberg reported that Afshar was facing scrutiny over authorizing the purchase of a special kind of glass and other construction materials that were flagged internally as items that could have been potentially purchased for Musk’s personal use.
At the time, Bloomberg reported that several Tesla employees had already been terminated due to the investigation and Afshar might follow suit. Two former employees previously told Insider that Afshar leads Tesla’s Texas gigafactory.
Eskin and Searle’s LinkedIn pages have yet to be updated. Searle joined Tesla in 2021 after serving as Walmart’s vice president, chief ethics and compliance officer.
He was hired after the automaker was accused of failing to “ensure that Tesla has an independent general counsel who can provide advice untainted by Musk,” in a lawsuit from a Tesla investor that alleged Musk had violated his 2018 settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Eskin has been with Tesla since 2017, according to her LinkedIn page. Previously, she worked as an attorney and associate vice president for policy and regulatory affairs at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute.
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