Brazil's Federal Prosecution Service said Tuesday that it will sue Google Inc. this week, because the company has refused to provide information about users of its social-networking service Orkut, as determined by decisions of a local court.

The Orkut website has become a favorite among Brazilians, especially youngsters, and some members have been using it to traffic drugs and commit other crimes, such as pedophilia.

Federal Prosecution Service officials said Google will be subject to paying fines and even be expelled from Brazil, if it continues to disregard the court's decisions.

Google's executives in Brazil had a meeting with members of the Prosecution Service in March and promised to cooperate with investigators.

However, prosecutors said Google did not send representatives for another meeting scheduled for April, and did not justify their absence.

A statement issued by Google denied the charges, saying that the company never refused to cooperate. It also stated that the company has since June provided information to eight investigations, and kept secret information concerning 60 other cases.

The company added it has taken seriously the issue of illegal contents on Orkut, and has been constantly developing new tools to detect and remove those contents from the website, as well as other measures to battle the new types of abuse of the service.

Source: Xinhua