It seems that coppers investigating drug trafficking in Brazil do not muck about. When they told Facebook that they needed help with their inquiries, and got a court order demanding just that, you do not say no.

Police in Sao Paulo have cuffed Facebook's most senior executive in Latin America Diego Dzodan (pictured), who is accused of ignoring a judicial order in a secret investigation involving organised crime and drug trafficking. The decision by Judge Marcel Montalvao follows the company's refusal to surrender user information from the WhatsApp messaging service, an application Facebook bought in 2014.

Facebook said in a written statement released Tuesday that the two companies operate independently "so the decision to arrest an employee from another company is an extreme and unwarranted step". WhatsApp said in its own statement that it had "cooperated as much as we could given the architecture of our service." It said the company was "unable to provide information we do not have".

However Monica Horta, a police spokeswoman in Sergipe, said that the arrest was made because neither Facebook nor WhatsApp responded to the request for information first issued four months ago. Two months ago, Montalvao started to fine the company $12,700 for every day it ignored the order, an amount that rose to $250,000 daily over the past month and it still ignored the demand.

A separate judicial order forced Brazil's telecommunications companies in December to block WhatsApp over its refusal to cooperate with a police inquiry. The move snarled communications for many of its 100 million users in Brazil for around 12 hours.