Brazil’s AGU asks Luiz Fux to hear the PGR before ruling on the betting industry’s challenge to the ban

Brazil’s Advocacia-Geral da União (AGU) wants the country’s Procuradoria-Geral da República (PGR) heard within 72 hours before Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux decides on requests from the betting sector to suspend the government’s measure. For PSPs and banks touching this market, the practical issue is not the legal drama itself; it is whether operators with authorization keep trading, how long the transition lasts, and what happens to funds stuck in accounts.

1. The AGU asked Fux to reject both the bid to suspend the provisional measure in full and the sector’s fallback proposals: either preserving the activity of companies that already had authorization or extending the transition period by at least six months.
2. The AGU also suggested that Fux consider holding a new public hearing on the matter. There is no set deadline for him to decide on the requests.
3. The AGU filed its position after Fux ordered, on 2 October, that the office comment on the sector entities’ claims. Under the government’s timetable, betting websites and apps were supposed to stop operating from 6 October.
4. Money left in player accounts is not supposed to disappear with the shutdown. The timetable provides for later reimbursement through financial institutions. According to data from the Ministry of Finance, 26.5 million people still held R$ 1.33 billion on the platforms before the voluntary withdrawal deadline expired.
5. In its filing, the AGU rejected the industry’s argument that there was no urgency for the provisional measure and that the government had not assessed the economic impact of the ban. It said the change was based on the government’s experience after the regulated market was implemented, as well as on impacts tied to household budgets, debt, and health.

On the revenue side, the AGU cited Federal Revenue data estimating tax collection losses of R$ 1,541 billion in 2026, R$ 5,150 billion in 2027, and R$ 5,330 billion in 2028. The industry groups told the STF the opposite story: they argued the ban would hurt tax revenue and public-policy funding, undermine legal certainty for companies that had received authorization to operate, and push more users toward clandestine platforms.

The underground market is already large enough to matter operationally. Between 25 September and 1 October, authorities sent 10,435 illegal sites for blocking and requested the removal of 3,040 pages, profiles, channels, groups, and servers. The AGU attributed those figures to a technical note from the Presidential Secretariat of Social Communication. It also cited a survey presented by ANJL identifying 18,195 sites with active offers.