Caught in a crossfire between the Brazilian Supreme Court and the country's President Jair Bolsonaro, messaging app Telegram has been banned from Brazil for failing to prevent its users from "spreading disinformation." The Brazilian Supreme Court has also asked the country's telecommunications agency, Anatel, to officially suspend Telegram until it complies with local orders and pays a series of fines.

The development comes after Brazilian authorities threatened to suspend Telegram earlier this year on charges of spreading "false election information" in favour of the far-right. According to media reports, misinformation favouring Bolsonaro is being peddled by Telegram users with impunity.

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Apple, Google, and local phone carriers have been given five days to block Telegram while Anatel has 24 hours to officially suspend the app. While Google has declined to comment on this matter as it is sub-judice, Apple did not revert to queries.

Reacting to the episode, Telegram’s Founder and CEO Pavel Durov has downplayed the allegations of "spreading false news," saying the "company was checking the wrong email address." In a long statement, Durov said, "It seems that we had an issue with emails going between our telegram.org corporate addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court.

“As a result of this miscommunication, the court ruled to ban Telegram for being unresponsive. On behalf of our team, I apologize to the Brazilian Supreme Court for our negligence. We definitely could have done a better job."

The statement added, "I ask the court to consider delaying its ruling for a few days at its discretion to allow us to remedy the situation by appointing a representative in Brazil and setting up a framework to react to future pressing issues like this in an expedited manner. The last 3 weeks have been unprecedented for the world and for Telegram. Our content moderation team was flooded with requests from multiple parties. However, I am certain that once a reliable channel of communication is established, we’ll be able to efficiently process takedown requests for public channels that are illegal in Brazil."

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Prior to this, Telegram was banned in Russia for refusing to share encryption keys in anti-terrorism investigations but the prohibition was lifted in 2020. "We (Telegram) complied with an earlier court decision in late February and responded with a suggestion to send future takedown requests to a dedicated email address," CEO Durov further said. In Brazil, millions of people use the Telegram app.

Meanwhile, President Bolsonaro is being investigated for allegedly leaking police documents and making comments falsely linking AIDS to the COVID-19 vaccine.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)