Tesla boss Elon Musk said on Tuesday that the takeover of Twitter would not be completed until he was guaranteed that less than 5% of the accounts on the platform were fake.

"The executive director of Twitter yesterday refused to prove that less than 5% of the accounts were fake," tweeted Mr. Musk, who has nearly 94 million subscribers on the social network. “Until he does, the transaction cannot go forward,” he added.

Mr. Musk refers to the explanations provided on Monday by Parag Agrawal, the boss of Twitter, on the measures taken to fight against spam and fake accounts.

The whimsical entrepreneur had responded with an emoji in the shape of poop.

Speaking via video at a conference on Monday, Musk also estimated that fake accounts accounted for at least 20% of Twitter users, according to Bloomberg and tweets from people at the event.

Mr. Musk had already announced last Friday to suspend the acquisition of the company, which he wishes to buy for 44 billion dollars, before rectifying the situation a few hours later by specifying that he was “still committed” to carry out the operation.

"20% fake accounts and spam is 4 times what Twitter claims, but the real number could be 'much' higher," Musk tweeted on Tuesday.

Contacted by AFP, Twitter did not react immediately to the last projection of the whimsical entrepreneur.

The action of the group fell 3.5% in electronic trading before the opening of Wall Street.