Brazil supreme court docket unfreezes property of Elon Musk’s Starlink, X

Brazil’s supreme court announced Friday that it ordered banks to transfer funds from Starlink and X accounts to pay fines the court levied against Elon Musk’s social network.

The court’s top justice, Alexandre de Moraes, and a panel of five other justices, found that X had repeatedly violated Brazilian law when it refused to appoint a legal representative in the country, and when it refused to remove content or profiles from its platform that the court determined to be harmful towards democratic institutions in Brazil.

The court had nearly 18.4 million Brazilian reals, or approximately $3.3 million, transferred out of the accounts. Musk acquired X, then known as Twitter, in 2022. Starlink is the satellite internet service run by SpaceX.

Following the transfers, the court ordered that the frozen bank accounts and assets of X and Starlink be released, saying there was no longer any need to keep them.

The court suspended X at the end of August, and the suspension remains in place. 

Musk and his businesses have said they view the actions of de Moraes as “illegal,” and his court’s orders as having been issued without due process. X and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

Brazilian news agency UOL reported earlier this month that some of the accounts de Moraes ordered Musk to suspend at X belong to users who allegedly threatened federal police officers involved in a probe of former right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro has been accused of instigating Brazil’s Jan. 8 riots and of attempting to stage a coup there.

Musk is a proponent of Bolsonaro, in part because the former Brazilian president authorized his business Starlink to operate in the country.

Musk has been ramping up insults and calls to impeach de Moraes since April. On Sept. 5, his long-time collaborator at the helm of SpaceX, COO Gwynne Shotwell, also took shots at the Brazil supreme court online.

She wrote, “@Alexandre, please stop harassing Starlink and let us keep serving the people of Brazil.”

Backers of de Moraes and the STF have seen the orders against X Corp. as an assertion of Brazilian sovereignty.

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