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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Alice Peacock & Antony Thrower

Elon Musk denies affair with Google founder's wife 'prompting their divorce'

Elon Musk has denied allegations he had an affair with the wife of a long time friend, describing it as a “character assassination.”

Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google with Larry Page, filed for divorce from entrepreneur Nichole Shanahan earlier this year.

A court filing at the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara County in January cited “irreconcilable differences”.

The Wall Street Journal claims the SpaceX boss had engaged in a brief affair with Ms Shanahan, prompting the divorce papers.

However Mr Musk has strongly denied the allegation.

Tweeting a link to the article, he replied: “This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!

Nicole Shanahan and Sergey Brin are getting divorced (Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)

“I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic.

“The character assassination attacks have reached a new level this year, but the articles are all nothing-burgers.

“I work crazy hours, so there just isn’t much time for shenanigans.

“None of the key people involved in these alleged wrongdoings were even interviewed!”

The court filings did not indicate which assets Mr Brin and Ms Shanahan jointly owned, nor how they would be divided, rather suggesting the details were yet to be determined.

Mr Musk has had a tumultuous few months in the public eye (AFP via Getty Images)

They read: “All issues as to the property rights or obligations of the parties will be determined by confidential binding arbitration in accordance with a written agreement between the parties.”

Mr Musk and Mr Brin are two of the richest people in the world with their fortunes standing at around $220million and $107billion respectively.

The claims come weeks after Twitter sued Mr Musk for violating the £36.5billion deal to buy the social media platform.

The tech company asked a Delaware court to order the world's richest person to complete the merger at the agreed $54.20 per Twitter share, according to a court filing.

He had previously agreed to buy Twitter in April but later declared he intended to walk away from the deal.

He also alleges Twitter broke the acquisition agreement when it fired two top managers and laid off a third of its talent-acquisition team.

Mr Musk pulled out of a deal to buy Twitter earlier this year (Getty Images)

In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk said Twitter has “not complied with its contractual obligations” surrounding the deal, namely giving him enough information to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform”.

Twitter is seeking a four-day trial this September, the New York Times reports .

The deal has a deadline of Oct 24 to be completed.

Earlier this year the billionaire strongly denied claims he sexually harassed a flight attendant on a private jet in 2016, saying they are “utterly untrue”.

The article quoted an anonymous person who said she was a friend of the flight attendant. The friend had provided a statement as part of the private settlement process, according to the article.

Musk responded on Twitter: “I have a challenge to this liar who claims their friend saw me 'exposed' – describe just one thing, anything at all (scars, tattoos, …) that isn’t known by the public. She won’t be able to do so, because it never happened."

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