Billionaire owner of electric car company, Tesla, Elon Musk, has suspended his $44 billion purchase of social media giant, following the emergence of spam and fake account data on the microblogging site.

The world’s richest man tweeted on Friday that the deal to buy “Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) was temporarily on hold” was he waits for the company to provide data on the proportion of its fake accounts.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk told his more than 92 million Twitter followers.

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

As a result of the sudden turn of events barely a month after the owners of Twitter agreed the deal to sell the company, Twitter shares drop more than 20% in premarket trading.

The shares were down 10% to $40.50 in morning trading on Friday, a steep discount to the $54.20 per share acquisition price.

However, a second tweet by the SpaceX CEO later in the day saying that he still remained committed to the deal, the shares regained some ground.

Before deciding to purchase Twitter, Musk had often complained about spam and fake accounts which are designed to manipulate or artificially boost activity on services like Twitter.

According to a regulatory filings from Twitter, the estimated number of spam accounts on the microblogging site has held steady below 5% since 2013, prompting some analysts to question why Musk was raising it now.

“This 5% metric has been out for some time. He clearly would have already seen it… So it may well be more part of the strategy to lower the price,” Susannah Streeter, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown said.

However, the terms of the Twitter deal agreement does not allow Musk to walk away because of a deteriorating business environment, such as a drop in demand for advertising or because Twitter’s shares have plunged.

He is contractually obligated to pay Twitter a $1 billion break-up fee if he does not complete the deal, and the language in the deal contract appears to cap any damages that Twitter can seek from Musk to that level.