- Justice Alexandre de Moraes announced that X will have to pay one more fine of 10.3 million reais (or $3.36 million) to resume operations in the country.
- X has already paid a fine of 18.35 million reais, which was directly taken out of its bank account.
- The new fine, however, is for violating the court-imposed ban for two days.
On Friday last week, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled that Elon Musk’s X will be allowed to resume operations in the country, but for that it’ll have to pay one more fine.
Earlier this month, the court had already withdrawn 18.35 million reais ($3.36 million) from the bank accounts of X and Starlink to clear the fines imposed on them. It’s worth noting that the court had control of the companies’ bank accounts.
X will now have to pay an additional fine of 10.3 million reais (or around $1.9 million). This fine is being imposed because X continued to operate for two days in the country even after it was banned by the Starlink satellite provider.
“Thus, in the face of non-compliance by X Brasil with the court order for two days, the company must collect a fine of 10 million reais so that it can immediately return to its activities in national territory,” Moraes said in a filing.
X’s legal representative in Brazil, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição, will also have to pay a separate fine of 300,000 reais ($55,000).
Moraes also added that X’s return to Brazil depends completely on its actions. It has to fully comply with Brazilian legislation and court orders in order to keep its business in the country.
X’s Troubles in Brazil
The issue between X and Brazil goes back to April, when Moraes asked the company to block 100 X accounts for spreading misinformation and hate speech. However, since Musk is a staunch supporter of free, unregulated speech, he declined.
In response to Musk’s denial, Moraes started a probe into X and Musk over disruption of justice. To this, Musk retaliated by vowing to defy the orders and calling the court’s request “censorship” and “against the rules.” He also called Moraes a “criminal” and a “dictator.”.
As was expected, Elon Musk paid no heed to the deadline, and the court kept its word and banned X from Brazil. All network service providers complied with the court orders except Starlink (a Musk-owned satellite service provider). It allowed Brazilian citizens to access X for up to two days after the ban, resulting in the court freezing the assets of both the companies.
Musk responded to this with a post on X saying, “Unless the Brazilian government returns the illegally seized property of SpaceX, we will seek reciprocal seizure of government assets too.”
However, the court did not budge from its decision. Instead, it withdrew funds from both accounts to clear the fines that Musk had earlier refused to pay. After that, the assets were unfrozen.
Now that Elon Musk has control of his companies’ assets once again, he’s responsible for paying the new fine. This means that X will have to pay the fine firsthand – the court won’t just withdraw the fine amount from the company’s bank account directly as it did before.
Although Musk hasn’t addressed the decision regarding the new fine yet, his past actions are proof that he might not give in to the court’s demand once again, at least not without a fight. Stay tuned to find out what happens next!
