Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Minister Alexandre de Moraes announced over the weekend that the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) paid its fines to the wrong state bank account and as a result, its services in Brazil will remain suspended until the matter is solved.
De Moraes banned access to X in Brazil in late August after the social media platform refused to comply with censorship orders and appoint a new legal representative in Brazil. The ban on X in Brazil came after a months-long feud between the Brazilian judge — a self-styled “anti-fake news crusader” with an extensive track record of censorship of conservatives — and X’s owner Elon Musk, who publicly accused de Moraes of rigging the 2022 Brazilian election, which far-left President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly won against then-incumbent conservative President Jair Bolsonaro.
Roughly one month after the ban, X announced that it would comply with the court’s censorship demands and reinstated Rachel de Oliveira Villa as the platform’s legal representative in Brazil.
De Moraes imposed several fines on X related to its previous defiance of the censorship orders totaling 28.6 million Brazilian reais (roughly $5.24 million). Of the total, 18.3 million reais (roughly $3.35 million) were imposed on X for its failure to comply with the censorship orders.
The court fined X another 10 million reais (roughly $1.8 million) at the end of September after X was “inadvertent[ly] and temporar[ily]” accessible from Brazil for a period of two days as a result of a switch in Latin American network providers.
The remaining 300,000 Brazilian reais (roughly $55,284) represent the accumulated sum of a daily fine of 20,000 reais (roughly $3,656) imposed on Rachel de Oliveira Villa in mid-August at a time when the X platform was in defiance of the court’s orders.
The Brazilian top court announced on Friday afternoon that X had issued the payment and that de Moraes requested STF’s judicial secretariat certify that the fines had been fully paid and effectively deposited into the account linked to the court case.
In the evening hours of Friday, de Moraes announced that X had issued the payments to the wrong bank account, transferring the 28.6 million reais to an account in the state-owned Caixa Econômica Federal (CEF) bank instead of sending the money to the required account in Banco do Brasil, another state-owned banking institution.
“The deposit of the amount of R$28,600,000.00 was not made correctly in the account linked to these proceedings,” de Moraes said in a Friday court ruling. “Despite the defendant being fully aware of its existence in view of the blocks and deposits made previously.”
“It is therefore necessary to regularize the deposit made by X Brazil Internet Ltda, so that the fines can be paid in full and effectively,” the ruling read.
De Moraes, in the new ruling, ordered CEF bank to immediately transfer the amount deposited by X to the account in Banco do Brasil. The judge also instructed the STF’s court secretariat to confirm when the transfer has taken place for the payment of the fine to the correct account.
Once those requirements have been met, de Moraes stated, the case will be forwarded to the Brazilian Attorney General’s Office for an opinion. From there, de Moraes will assess the restoration of X’s services in Brazil. The court ruling does not establish a deadline for the pending decisions.
According to the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, the 28.6 million reais paid by X in fines will remain “at the disposal” of the STF until de Moraes, as rapporteur of the case against the social media platform, issues a ruling that “will subsequently determine the final destination” of the funds, “as will occur with any new amounts relating to fines.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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