Brazil's top court imposes new fine before allowing X to resume service

SAO PAULO/BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazil's Supreme Court said on Friday that social platform X still needs to pay just over $5 million in pending fines, including a new one, before it will be allowed to resume its service in the country, according to a court document.

Earlier this week, the Elon Musk-owned U.S. firm told the court it had complied with orders to stop the spread of misinformation and asked it to lift a ban on the platform.

But Judge Alexandre de Moraes responded on Friday with a ruling that X and its legal representative in Brazil must still agree to pay a total of 18.3 million reais ($3.4 million) in pending fines that were previously ordered by the court.

In his decision, the judge said that the court can use resources already frozen from X and Starlink accounts in Brazil, but to do so the satellite company, also owned by Musk, had to drop its pending appeal against the funds blockage.

The judge also demanded a new 10 million reais ($1.8 million) fine related to a brief period of time last week when X became available again for some users in Brazil.

X, formerly known as Twitter, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to a person close to X, the tech firm will likely pay all the fines, but will consider challenging the extra 10 million reais that was imposed by the court after the platform ban.

X has been suspended since late August in Brazil, one of its largest and most coveted markets, after Moraes ruled it had failed to comply with orders related to restricting hate speech and naming a local legal representative.

Musk, who had denounced the orders as censorship and called Moraes a "dictator," backed down and started to reverse his position last week, when X lawyers said the platform tapped a local representative and would comply with court rulings.

In Friday's decision, Moraes said that X had proved it had now blocked accounts as ordered by the court, and also named the required legal representative in Brazil.

($1 = 5.4341 reais)

(Reporting by Ricardo Brito in Brasilia and Luciana Magalhaes in Sao Paulo; Writing by Andre Romani; Editing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez, Sarah Morland and Rosalba O'Brien)