Brazil’s Finance Committee approves public hearing on online betting oversight and the Willer Tomaz–Blaze case

The Chamber of Deputies’ Finance and Taxation Committee (CFT) has approved a request for a public hearing on tax compliance, financial controls, and anti-money laundering safeguards in Brazil’s online betting sector. The hearing is also meant to address the facts reported around lawyer Willer Tomaz and the company behind Blaze’s operation in Brazil.

1. The request was submitted by Deputy Hildo Rocha (MDB-MA) and approved on Wednesday (5). It was presented on 29 October and calls for a public hearing on the tax regularity of online betting platforms, the effectiveness of financial monitoring and control tools, and possible tax irregularities or signs of money laundering linked to the reported Willer Tomaz–Blaze facts.
2. In the justification for the request, Rocha said the expansion of the online betting market requires stronger tax oversight, financial transparency, and anti-money laundering prevention. He also referred to recent reports involving financial operations connected to Willer Tomaz and Blaze, as well as possible monitoring failures attributed to the operator, while stating that the request does not imply any prior judgment on illegal conduct or liability.
3. The hearing is intended to gather official information to assess whether current controls are sufficient, identify gaps, and discuss measures to improve supervision. For high-risk operators, that matters because the agenda covers the same pressure points that usually decide whether a market stays open, gets tightened, or starts producing harder enforcement action: tax collection, transaction monitoring, and suspicious activity reporting.
4. The invited institutions are the Ministry of Finance, especially the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA) and its Subsecretariat for Monitoring and Inspection; the Federal Revenue Service; the Ministry of Sport, through the National Secretariat for Sports Betting and Economic Development of Sport; the Council for Financial Activities Control (Coaf); and the Federal Police. The committee has not yet set a date for the hearing.