Responsible for X Brasil leaves position under Musk-STF clash – 04/13/2024 – Power

Administrator of the Brazilian arm of

The company’s registration form at the Commercial Board of the State of São Paulo (Jucesp) records, on Wednesday (10), Gualda’s letter of resignation dated two days earlier, in which he leaves his positions as administrator and representative of the company.

Until Friday evening (12), the name of a new administrator did not appear in the document.

Last Tuesday (9), the minister of the STF (Supreme Federal Court) Alexandre de Moraes had denied the request of the X in Brazil so that the responsibility for any disobedience to the judicial decision could be attributed to the international X.

Lawyers for the Brazilian arm of the company argued that the office in the country would have “no capacity to interfere in the administration and operation of the platform, nor the authority to make decisions regarding compliance with court orders in this regard.”

Moraes denied the postulation, saying that it bordered on bad faith litigation.

He recalled that the platform had been subject to Brazilian court orders for years, in addition to participating in meetings at both the STF and the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) regarding the criminal exploitation of social networks in the electoral process.

In another part of the decision, he states that “the consequences of any obstruction of justice, or disobedience to the court order, will be borne by the administrators” of X Brasil.

It concludes by saying that there is no doubt about the full civil and administrative legal responsibility of the company, “as well as that of its legal representatives, including with regard to possible criminal liability, before the Brazilian Justice”.

In the decision, Gualda, 40, was mentioned in two sections, as attorney for the two companies that make up the limited liability company Twitter Brasil (today X Brasil).

He had assumed the position on August 17th, according to the Jucesp document, when Fiamma Zarife left the company. Former leader of Twitter in Brazil and Latin America, she had left months earlier to become general director of AirBnb for South America.

On Friday night, on his Linkedin profile, Gualda stated that he stayed at X until April 2024.

He arrived at the social network in 2021, after spending two years at the Machado Meyer office, almost a year and a half as head of the legal department at 99, five at Yahoo and 6 at Yahoo! Brazil.

People who worked with him told the reporter that he has a low profile and praised his training.

The lawyer has two degrees — in social sciences from USP and in law from Mackenzie — and received a master’s degree in political science from USP, where he dealt with the work of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor.

His name appeared in recent days in the so-called “Twitter Files [arquivos do Twitter] – Brazil”, the name given by journalist and activist Michael Shellenberger to posts on X with a series of criticisms of Moraes.

He inserts into the publications what would be emails from platform employees reporting demands from Brazilian authorities before Musk took over the company. In one of them, a Twitter representative cites a determination to networks so that algorithms stop recommending content that discredits the electoral system and that provides data about them.

In one of the messages, from August 2021, Gualda says, in English, that “there is a strong political component to this investigation and the court [TSE] is trying to put pressure” to comply with decisions.

The reporter contacted him via email and WhatsApp message, but received no response.

It was after the release of the “Twitter Files” that Musk started attacking Moraes and threatened to reopen profiles blocked by court order.

In reaction, the minister included him in the digital militia investigation and decided that in Brazil.

The possibility of Brazilian employees being punished had been raised by Musk, in a post on Monday (8).

“We need to get our employees to a safe place or not in a position of responsibility” before doing a data extraction, he posted. “They have been told they will be arrested.”

Background

The punishment of an administrator of a big tech in Brazil would not be new.

In 2012, the then general director of Google Brazil, Fabio Coelho, was detained in São Paulo by the Federal Police, on suspicion of a crime of disobedience due to the fact that YouTube had not deleted two videos with attacks on a then candidate for mayor of Large field.

At the time, the executive was charged and released on the same day, as it was a crime with less offensive potential.

Diego Dzodan, then vice-president of Facebook for Latin America, spent a night in the Pinheiros Provisional Detention Center in São Paulo in 2016, accused of not cooperating with investigations into conversations on WhatsApp, which belongs to Facebook .

The executive’s defense argued that collaboration was not possible due to the encryption of conversations on the application, and the STJ (Superior Court of Justice) subsequently blocked the action.

According to Mauricio Dieter, professor of criminal law at USP, in theory the administrator of the Brazilian arm of a platform can respond, in case of non-compliance with a court order, for the crimes of disobedience (detention sentence of 15 days to 6 months) or disobedience the court decision on loss or suspension of rights (from 3 months to 2 years).

Furthermore, he would be subject to fines and precautionary measures if it is believed that he is impeding the investigation, which would theoretically include even temporary imprisonment.

Lawyer Fabio Veras, in turn, says that it would be easier to hold a Brazilian administrator accountable than Musk. But this would not prevent X’s international headquarters from eventually reactivating the suspended accounts under court order.

“The worst that could happen to a Brazilian administrator would not be enough to meet the court’s original intention”, he states.