Lula ended Brazil’s bets funding stream for public security, after it had generated R$ 912.5 million in 17 months

Brazil’s fixed-odds betting tax was paying for public security, the Federal Police, and border monitoring — and then Medida Provisória 1.394 removed the source 57 days after Lula signed a law expanding the Federal Police’s share. For high-risk operators, the point is simple: tax earmarks can move fast, and so can the political arithmetic around them.

1. Data obtained by BNLData via the Lei de Acesso à Informação show that bets generated R$ 912.5 million for public security between February 2025 and June 2026. Of that total, R$ 553.1 million came in 2025 and R$ 359.4 million in the first half of this year.
2. Before the cut, the money was flowing into the Fundo Nacional de Segurança Pública (FNSP), the Polícia Federal, and border monitoring. More than half of the FNSP amount — R$ 462.1 million in the period — was transferred to Brazilian states, where it funded patrol cars, equipment, technology for military and civil police, firefighters, forensic services, and municipal guards.
3. By law, the fund also reserved at least 6% for combating violence against women, including ankle bracelets for aggressors, and 10% to 15% for housing and quality-of-life programs for police officers. In other words, the bets stream was not a side note; it had become part of the operating budget for a fairly broad security apparatus.
4. The most pointed contradiction is the Funapol, the Federal Police fund. On July 30, Lula signed the law assigning 1% of bets revenue to the Funapol in 2026, rising to 3% from 2028. The Ministry of Justice said at the ceremony that everyone deserves health, structure, and dignity. Then Medida Provisória 1.394, dated September 25, revoked Articles 29 to 35 of Lei 13.756/2018, which had assigned part of betting revenue to security institutions.
5. The effect was immediate. The spreadsheets show that the Funapol, which had been receiving about R$ 1.5 million per month, received R$ 26.9 million in May and R$ 26.0 million in June after the new rule took effect in April by provisional measure. At that pace, public security was receiving about R$ 75 million per month from bets, or roughly R$ 900 million per year that disappears with the source.

There is another wrinkle that payment and licensing teams will recognize immediately: earmarking does not mean the money arrives intact. The SPA-MF’s Periodic Panorama shows that in 2025 the legal allocations from bets totaled R$ 614.4 million for public security and R$ 25.1 million for the Funapol, but only R$ 553.1 million actually reached the agencies’ cash accounts. The Tesouro kept 30% of the federal share of the FNSP, Sisfron, and Funapol under the Desvinculação de Receitas da União (DRU), moving about R$ 110 million labeled for security into “free federal resources.” For operators, that is the usual Brasília lesson: the headline allocation is one thing, the final destination is another.