Billionaire Elon Musk said he and his brother bankrolled their father Errol Musk since he became financially broke in the 90s.
In a tweet, Elon Musk, the world's richest man wrote, "My brother and I financially supported him and his extended family in South Africa since then on condition that he does not do bad things. Unfortunately, he did do bad things".
However, it remains unclear what Tesla and SpaceX CEOs meant by "bad things".
The tech mogul has often shared about his contentious relationship with his dad. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Elon Musk called his father a "terrible human being".
In a 2017 interview, Musk told the magazine, "Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done".
Musk was responding to a Twitter thread started by Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor, that 'self-made billionaires is a myth'.
Reich in his Twitter post said that Elon Musk came from a family that owned an emerald mine in Apartheid South Africa. Reich also named other billionaires such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates in his post and said they purportedly relied on others to get their start. "Self-made billionaires are a myth, Reich said.
He added, “The origins of self-made billionaires are often depicted as a ‘rags-to-riches’ rise to the top fueled by nothing but personal grit and the courage to take risks — like dropping out of college or starting a business in a garage".
Musk slammed Reich for misrepresenting his background in the post. “You both an idiot and a liar,” Musk tweeted in response to Reich's post. Further, Elon Musk attached a link to a Substack post written by Jeremy Arnold, which debunked claims that Musk grew up wealthy.
Recently Musk's father Errol also provided a glimpse at the family's financial arrangement during a recent interview with Australian radio station KIIS FM.
In that interview Errol said, "We are a very frugal, stingy family. If I want to spend anything, I have to answer 100 questions of why".
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