TCU prosecutor asks for Brazil’s betting ban to take effect only on December 31, 2026, with a “proper transition”

Lucas Rocha Furtado, the deputy prosecutor at the Ministério Público junto ao Tribunal de Contas da União (MPTCU), has asked for a precautionary measure to delay the betting ban in Medida Provisória nº 1.394/2026 until December 31, 2026. For PSPs and operators, the useful part is not the politics around it but the signal: even a prosecutor who says he is against betting is arguing that the government cannot unwind licenses overnight.

1. Furtado filed the representation on Monday, 28, asking the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) to suspend immediate enforcement of the ban on fixed-odds betting and set the effective date at the end of 2026. He also wants the Ministry of Finance to produce an impact report and for operators to receive a proportional refund of fees already paid.
2. The prosecutor said he has already taken the sector to the TCU twice before: in May 2025, when he asked for an investigation into shortcomings in the state’s response to the negative effects of bets, and in August 2026, when he pushed for action against the expansion of illegal platforms in case TC 017.927/2026-9. Even so, he wrote that the MP “cannot be executed in the way it was drafted” and that, in his view, there is “unconstitutionality and illegality” in the measure.
3. His main argument is procedural. He says the MP was issued nine days before the first round, alongside President Lula’s speech comparing bets to cancer, which in his view shows a “clear deviation of purpose.” He argues that the constitutional tests of urgency and relevance for a provisional measure must be technical, not political-electoral.
4. On the licensing side, Furtado says companies that were authorized under Lei nº 14.790/2023, paid outorgas (license fees), and built their operations had a legitimate expectation of regulatory stability protected by Article 5, XXXVI of the Constitution. A summary cancellation without a reasonable transition, he argues, would violate that principle.
5. He goes further and says that if the authorizations are cancelled without proportional restitution for the unused period, the state would be unjustly enriched, which is barred by Article 884 of the Civil Code. He also cites Article 21 of the Lei de Introdução às Normas do Direito Brasileiro (LINDB), saying the administration must account for the practical consequences of its decisions, including thousands of direct and indirect jobs, sponsorship contracts with football clubs, technology vendors, and service providers.

The filing also quotes the Flamengo president in a CNN interview, where he said the state cannot change the rules of the game in the middle of the match without destroying trust and creating uncertainty. For the market, that is the real issue: not whether Brazil should regulate betting, but whether it can do so without turning licensed operators into a cautionary tale for anyone considering paying for authorizations upfront.