Elon Musk-controlled satellite internet provider Starlink has told Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel it will not comply with a court order to block social media platform X in the country until its local accounts are unfrozen.
Anatel confirmed the information to Reuters on Monday after its head Carlos Baigorri told Globo TV it had received a note from Starlink, which has more than 200,000 customers in Brazil, and passed it onto Brazil’s top court.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last week ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down X, which is also owned by billionaire Musk, for lacking a legal representative in Brazil.
The move also led to the freezing of Starlink’s bank accounts in Brazil. Starlink is a unit of Musk-led rocket company SpaceX. The billionaire responded to the account block by calling Moraes a “dictator.”
The issue of freezing star link accounts predates this shut down and was the result of some issue with x.
I’ve got no love for musk, but if the government is going after starlink because they have issues with x, it’s hard for me to disagree with him when he calls this dictator like. And thus it’s hard for me to fault him for using it as leverage.
If it’s about paying fines then that’s standard procedure. You can’t limited liability yourself out of fines: If the subsidiary doesn’t pay they fall onto the owner, said owner is Musk, said Musk has assets in Brazil in the form of Starlink accounts, hence, you impound them. If he had parked his Yacht there they would’ve gone for that.
This reminds me of an old, really old case: Some nobleman owed a Hanseatic trader money over a grain shipment. Refused to pay. Had the gall to show up in Hamburg. Trader had him arrested, noble threw a fit, appealed to the Emperor. Emperor said: “Dude that’s Hamburg, they DGAF if you’re a noble short of forbidding you to take up residence in the city, pay up”. Ended up selling most of his land to get out of debt and therefore prison, and an important lesson about assumed privilege was learned.
You can limit liability by creating separate entities and this is absolutely the standard, at least in the US. You would have to be very ignorant, or have sought no outside counsel, if you have some kind of decently profitable business and haven’t done so. It’s the whole point of these legal structures, such as LLCs. I don’t know the particulars of the case, nor the particulars of Brazilian law, so I don’t really know if it the case here.
That being said, speaking from an only slightly informed US perspective, if they are suing Musk himself, then yes they can absolutely go after his assets, which would include ownership in Starlink and X. However, if they fined X, it wouldn’t even remotely be a stretch that they do not have the legal authority to lock down Starlink accounts, as they are two separate entities that are presumably linked only by common figurehead.
State fines against a company aren’t a civil matter. Brazil isn’t suing anyone, they’re enforcing compliance with law by means of fines and the laws governing that would be written shoddily indeed if you could avoid fines by incanting “limited liability” like some sovereign citizen. “I’m not breaking laws, I’m doing limited liability business”.
Nor did I say anyone was suing anyone. I was just drawing up an example of a case how they could go after both entities. In this case, it appears the fine was levied against X, and not Musk.
And no one is talking about “avoiding fines.” WTF are you even on about? We are talking about them seizing Starlink assets because of fines levied against X. Musk doesn’t even own a majority share of SpaceX (who owns starlink). You are confusing “the face of” with “the legal entity.”
You are. Who is going to pay the fine against X? If Starlink doesn’t like it they’re free to sue Musk for the money back. They can cancel a couple of his shares to cover it. I don’t care. Brazil doesn’t care. The fine has been issued, and it’s going to be paid.
Blatantly lying about what I’ve said just indicates to me that you have no interest in getting to the truth, so I won’t bother any further.