A Brazilian court blocked Facebook funds worth BRL19.5 million ($6.1 million) after WhatsApp, owned by the social media giant, failed to submit messages that could potentially help the court in a drugs case, G1 reported.

The funds are equal to WhatsApp’s accumulated fines over the last five months for non-compliance. Since WhatsApp has no bank accounts in Brazil, the judge froze funds of its owner instead.

According to the country’s federal police, WhatsApp paid no heed to repeated orders over five months to hand over messages exchanged by users suspected to be members of an international cocaine smuggling ring being investigated since January.

The report also said police believe that without these messages, it will be very difficult to expose other members of the ring and prove links between those captured in recent raids and their accomplices in Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Spain.

The news follows courts in the country banning WhatsApp in Brazil on two occasions, both times for not giving up user data. The bans were shortlived, though, and received backlask from the country’s 100 million users of the messaging service.

Back then, Facebook claimed WhatsApp does not store messages and even if it did, would not be able to read them because they would be encrypted.

WhatsApp introduced end-to-end encryption for all data sent via the instant messaging app in April.

In March, a Facebook executive in Brazil was arrested over the same issue, though released after nearly 24 hours.