Brazilian prosecutors asked a federal judge on Tuesday for permission to file a civil lawsuit against Google Inc., alleging it was withholding user information required for a separate criminal investigation.
The prosecutors want Google to pay a $61 million fine and asked that if it refuses to comply with its information request, its Brazilian unit be dissolved.
In its request, the federal prosecutor's office in Sao Paulo alleges that several community pages on Google's popular social network site, Orkut, have been used to organize criminal activity and promote child pornography.
The prosecutors want a federal judge to order Google to hand over user information on those Orkut pages that are being investigated for promoting crimes. If Google were to disobey such an order, it would have to pay a daily fine of $93,000.
The complaint also requests that Google be forced to pay a fine of $61 million for collective damages caused by its refusal to obey previous judicial orders.
When prosecutors first said they were considering filing the complaint last week, a Google spokeswoman told Reuters that the company was cooperating with Brazilian authorities.
"We have obeyed all the judicial orders that requested we remove undue content. Some orders demanded that we turn over user information for investigation and we complied," Nicole Wong, a spokeswoman for Google Inc., said at the time.
In anticipation of the complaint, Google's Brazilian unit petitioned a judge on Monday to name an independent specialist to determine whether it is withholding user information.
In its request, Google said its Orkut pages are housed on its server in the United States and that Brazilian authorities should request that information from its headquarters, not its Brazilian unit.
In a statement, Google's Brazilian unit said it filed the request to show that despite the "attacks from the prosecutor's office," it does not possess a data bank of its Orkut communities or any information about those users.
Orkut has about 16 million users, and about 72 percent of them are Brazilian, according to Google data.
