Twitter Employees in Singapore Escorted out Due to Unpaid Rent

Elon Musk seems to be proving he is not interested in paying rent for office space.

Twitter employees in Singapore were recently escorted out of their office building by landlords due to the company's failure to pay rent on time.

This failure to pay rent on time is the second time for Musk's Twitter, with the company being sued by California Property Trust for failing to pay around $136000 in rent.

Twitter CapitaGreen Building Rent Payment Failure Details

Twitter has been renting office space from Singapore's CapitaGreen building since 2015, with it serving as its Asia-Pacific headquarters from that time onwards. However, with Musk's takeover and cost-cutting procedures to make Twitter profitable, the company was unable to pay rent to the building's landlords, per Singapore's Business Times.

As a result, Twitter told its employees on Jan. 11 that they had until 5 PM Singapore time to leave the CapitaGreen building and resume work from home the day after, per an anonymous source who asked not to be named.

The source also mentioned that Singapore-based staffers were reassigned as remote workers in the company's internal system until further notice.

Unfortunately, some employees were caught off guard after the 5 PM deadline, with them being escorted out of the building by CapitaGreen's landlords, CapitaLand.

According to Platformer reporter Casey Newton, some employees mentioned that the email informing staff to leave came "too late," with them being unable to get a chance to clear their belongings before being escorted out, per Channel News Asia.

Despite the unceremonial escorting, Twitter eventually paid the rent it owed to CapitaLand, with the company stating that Musk paid it in the late afternoon on Jan. 12, Singapore time.

As such, Twitter informed employees who were asked to work remotely to return to the office to do their work there. Although this may be true, an employee said that staff was also asked to leave and that they were still working at home as of the afternoon of Jan. 12.

Regardless, a spokesperson for CapitaLand said that "Twitter has been a tenant of of CapitaGreen since 2015, and it remains a tenant of CapitaGreen."

The spokesperson didn't offer any clarifications to elaborate on the company's statement.

Not The Only One

CapitaLand isn't the only one who demanded rent from Twitter. You may remember that California Property Trust sued Twitter on New Year's day for failing to pay $136,250 in rent for its San Francisco headquarters.

According to Engadget, California Property Trust alleged that Twitter disobeyed the ruling in a complaint it submitted to the San Francisco County Superior Court that week.

California Property also mentioned in its complaint that the microblogging company recently stopped paying rent on all of its international operations to reduce costs.

This refusal to pay rent may be due to the company wanting to renegotiate lease terms following the many layoffs it executed since Musk's takeover.

Regardless Twitter's refusal to pay rent is one of Musk's controversial and questionable cost-saving strategies to make Twitter profitable, per Gizmodo.