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It looks like Twitter may soon be banned in Brazil due to it's removal of it's legal representative from the country, which in turn traces back to an earlier fight over Twitter refusing to suspend accounts and remove tweets require by Brazil.

Recently Brazil also frozen starlink assets due to the fines twitter owes.

I understand the legal issues with twitter, why it owes fines and may be suspended. What I don't understand is why a judge in Brazil is allowed to sanction a different company due to twitter's actions. I realize Musk is connected to both companies, but it doesn't seem like that would be enough basis for punishing one company for another companies behaviors. Musk owns 54% of starlink, which means 46% of the company is owned by people who would be penalized for twitter's behavior despite having no say in twitter's actions.

So I'm wondering what the legal basis is for the freezing of starlink's assets as a result of twitter's fines.

dsollen
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2 Answers2

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In that case, the court is evoking Article 139 of the Civil Code that gives the judicial branch powers to deal with contempt of court. That article reads:

Art. 139. The judge shall conduct the proceedings in accordance with the provisions of this Code, and it is incumbent upon the judge to:

(...)

III - prevent or suppress any act contrary to the dignity of justice and dismiss merely dilatory motions;

IV - order all inductive, coercive, mandatory, or subrogatory measures necessary to ensure compliance with a court order, including in actions that involve pecuniary obligations;

As you can see, the law gives the judge broad discretion to enforce compliance with their orders.

In the specific case involving X, the judge is claiming that in order to compel X to comply, assets of all companies of the economic group headed by Elon Musk must be frozen. One of the reasons is that X's bank accounts are holding much less cash than expected. Of course, whether this is a reasonable thing to do is being disputed by Starlink. In fact, all the information I gave in this answer can be read from a recent decision in a Starlink's appeal (in Portuguese, Starlink's arguments were dismissed).

sourcream
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Associated entities

While the specifics used of what exactly is an associated entity are Australian, the concept of holding all associated entities responsible for the actions of one of them is pretty universal.

At its core, the concept depends on the associates being able to act as one. That is, the legal or de facto structure is such that they can act with a common purpose - that they have a common ‘mind’ in control.

For this example, the connection is straightforward. Elon Musk is in a position to exercise control of both companies, therefore, the law can treat them as associated and hold one responsible for the wrongdoing of the other.

Dale M
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