Twitter completed a A$10.35 million settlement to whistleblower Peiter Zatko mere days before he filed his official complaints with three government bodies in July.

Zatko was brought on as Twitter’s head of security in 2020, and fired in January after internally raising the same concerns he later brought to Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.

The settlement was confidential, and related to lost payment and potential stock options after his firing. As part of the deal, Zatko signed a nondisclosure agreement blocking him from disparaging Twitter in public, although this doesn’t cover congress hearings or governmental whistleblower complaints.

His whistleblower complaints were leaked to the Washington Post and CNN late last month.

Zatko (pictured above) has since been subpoenaed by Elon Musk over his claims that Twitter leadership is incentivised to inflate user numbers, and therefore has a financial reason for underreporting the bot count, and for not making adequate efforts to crack down on the proliferation of automated “bot” and spam accounts.

“Twitter executives have little or no personal incentive to accurately ‘detect’ or measure the prevalence of spam bots,” Zatko claimed.

“Senior management had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bot accounts… they were concerned that if accurate measurements ever became public, it would harm the image and valuation of the company.”

Twitter claims Zatko was fired “for ineffective leadership and poor performance” and that his whistleblower complaint “is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”

This doesn’t exactly jibe with the A$10 million pay out he received, and is sure to be of interest to Musk’s legal team.