A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday seized about $3 million from bank accounts belonging to social media platform X and satellite-based internet service provider Starlink, both companies controlled by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The move by Justice Alexandre de Moraes was aimed at collecting funds that are equivalent to the amount that X owes to the country in fines. The bank accounts of the two companies have since been unfrozen.
Legal analysts have questioned de Moraes’ prior decision to freeze Starlink’s bank account to pay for cases related to X. While Musk owns both X and SpaceX, which operates Starlink, the two companies are separate entities.
That’s the fine.
The original issue was not taking down illegal content in X even though there was a court order and a fine to do so, and withdrawing their legal representation from the country when they were expected to legally represent the company (i.e take responsibility for X breaking the law). Brazil requires companies to have that in order to operate, so X got blocked, and now the fine has been taken for their assets.