The U.S. Securities Exchange Commission says Elon Musk’s offer to pay $2,923 is not enough to defend three agency lawyers who were scheduled to question him last month in an investigation on its purchase of Twitter Inc in 2022.

Instead of rubber-stamping the billionaire’s proposal to reimburse the agency for flying his lawyers to Los Angeles in September while he was in Florida to attend a SpaceX rocket launch, a judge should formally sanction Musk in order to that he realizes that his behavior is not “trivial”. question,” the SEC said in a court filing Friday.

The regulator is seeking information about Musk’s Twitter stock purchases and disclosures about his investments before he spent $44 billion to buy the social media platform, which he later renamed X.

Simply “ordering reimbursement for travel expenses would not deter many people considering violating a court order – much less someone with Musk’s extraordinary means,” the SEC said.

But a lawyer for Musk, who is the world’s richest person with a net worth of $276.5 billion, says U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s options are limited now that he has offered her pay the $2,923. Corley repeatedly ordered Musk to cooperate with the agency after initially conducting two interviews, but refused to participate in a third round of questioning. Musk finally met with SEC lawyers to testify on October 3.

“It is doubtful whether the court could entertain a request for sanctions given Mr. Musk’s agreement to grant the relief requested by the SEC,” Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, wrote to the judge on Friday.

The SEC contends that Musk should be held responsible for skipping the scheduled September deposition — which he said was excusable because he had an urgent obligation to attend the Cape Canaveral launch. The agency asked Corley to “make clear that Musk’s failure to appear was not a trivial matter and to appropriately associate the financial penalty with his misconduct.”

The SEC declined to comment beyond its court filing. Spiro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.