Twitter Faces Lawsuit Over Unpaid Bills In Four Countries

Elon Musk's Twitter is facing another lawsuit after the company was unable to pay for services for offices in London, Dublin, Sydney and Singapore, according to a Guardian report.

The Australian firm's lawsuit is the latest alleging non-payment of bills and rent against Twitter. Facilitate said from 2022 through early 2023, it installed sensors in Twitter's offices in London and Dublin, completed an office fit-out in Singapore, and cleared an office in Sydney, Reuters reported.

Facilitate is seeking a collective payment of over A$1m ($666,000) across the three businesses.

The company has now decommissioned Twitter's Sydney office and temporarily stored its contents, according to case documents obtained by the Guardian.

The company claims Twitter owed about 203,000 pounds, S$546,600 and A$61,300, respectively.

The case is filed in the US district court of Northern California at the end of June.

Facilitate said it was seeking compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial, legal costs and interest at the maximum legal rate.

However, Twitter has not yet filed a defence.

In the court filings, the company said that it is not the sole company suing Twitter since Musk took over. The firm said that Musk's moderation decisions and the unbanning of far-right and neo-Nazi accounts had alienated advertisers and caused a financial crisis for the company.

"Twitter responded with a campaign of extreme belt-tightening that amounted to requiring nearly everyone to whom it owes money to sue," the firm said.

"Twitter stopped paying rent on some of its offices and stopped paying several vendors whose services it was still using. Twitter also cancelled many contracts and stopped paying people to whom it owes money."

In May, a former public relations firm filed a suit in a New York court saying Twitter had not paid its bills, while early this year U.S.-based advisory firm Innisfree M&A Inc sued it, seeking about $1.9 million for what it said were unpaid bills after it advised Twitter on its acquisition by Musk.

Britain's Crown Estate, an independent commercial business that manages the property portfolio belonging to the monarchy, in January, began court proceedings over alleged unpaid rent on Twitter's London headquarters.