Mariana Piccoli Lins Cavalcanti takes over sanction enforcement at Brazil’s SPA-MF on September 15

Brazil’s Ministry of Finance named Mariana Piccoli Lins Cavalcanti as the new Subsecretary of Sanction Enforcement at the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA), the unit that handles supervision and penalties for sports betting platforms. For operators and PSPs touching Brazil, the message is straightforward: the enforcement side of the house is being reorganized, not softened.

1. Her appointment was published in the Diário Oficial da União on Tuesday, September 15, and signed by Cabinet Minister Miriam Belchior under Decree No. 9.794/2019. Piccoli replaces Raiana Falcão Ferreira, who was removed in early September.
2. Piccoli is a Brazilian federal civil servant in the career of Specialists in Public Policy and Government Management, appointed in 2012. Her academic background includes a master’s degree in Economics from the Brazilian Institute of Education, Development and Research (2022), a postgraduate degree in Competition Defense from Fundação Getúlio Vargas (2011), a degree in Economics from the University of Brasília (2009), and a degree in Law from the Centro Universitário de Brasília (2006).
3. Since 2025, she had been serving as an adviser in the National Data Infrastructure Department of the Digital Government Secretariat at the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services. In other words, the new sanctions chief is coming in from public administration, not from the betting industry itself.
4. The appointment closes a vacancy created by a broader reshuffle inside the SPA. In August, the ministry also replaced Daniela Olímpio de Oliveira in the Subsecretariat for Authorizations with Fernanda Villela Oliveira, who had been general coordinator for the supervision of commercial promotions. The official line was that some posts had accumulated wear and needed renewal.
5. The personnel changes land as betting moves deeper into Brazil’s electoral conversation. The source says the topic has moved beyond economic and social debate and into presidential campaigning, which is the sort of political heat that usually makes enforcement staff less sentimental, not more.