Brazil’s Novo party takes betting ban to TSE, seeks to void Lula and Alckmin’s ticket over alleged campaign abuse

Brazil’s Novo party has filed an electoral lawsuit at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) arguing that the government’s sudden ban on fixed-odds betting was used as a campaign tool. For payment providers and operators, the point is not the politics; it is that a regulated vertical was first built, then curtailed by provisional measure, and that sequence is now being used as evidence in an abuse-of-power case.

1. The complaint, registered as 0603194-42.2026.6.00.0000, was filed by Novo’s national directory against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin (PSB). It was assigned on Tuesday (20/10) to electoral chief justice Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva, with the petition dated 19 October and signed electronically that morning by Lucas Bessoni Coutinho de Magalhães, Paulo Augusto Fernandes Fortes and Lucas Menezes Elias of Bessoni & Fortes, based in Belo Horizonte.
2. Novo is asking the court to find abuse of political power under article 22 of Complementary Law 64/1990. The party also wants Lula and Alckmin’s candidacies or diplomas revoked and both men barred from office for eight years.
3. The betting issue sits at the center of the argument. Novo points to Provisional Measure No. 1.394/2026, issued nine days before the first round, as one of 35 normative acts the government allegedly used in 2026 to tilt the presidential race. The party frames the move as a reversal of policies the same administration had built.
4. On the chronology, the filing is blunt: the government had previously pushed the bill that became Law No. 14.790/2023, Lula signed it on 29 December 2023, and the administration sold five-year operating licenses. Then, on 19 June 2026, Lula signed Decree No. 13.033, which regulated the blocking of accounts belonging to irregular operators. Three months later, Novo says, the government banned the whole activity by provisional measure.
5. MP 1.394 banned the exploitation, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting. It also terminated authorizations granted under Law No. 14.790/2023 and repealed most of that law. Article 7 gave operators ten days to take websites offline and, from publication onward, blocked any new funds from entering bettors’ accounts. The Ministry of Finance said bettors could withdraw balances until 23:59 on 5 October.

Novo’s broader timing argument is that the ten-day shutdown period ended exactly the day after the first round. The petition contrasts that with other measures it says were calibrated to the electoral calendar, including a R$ 2.12 per liter diesel subsidy kept in place until 26 October, zero federal taxes on gasoline from 10 October to 9 November, and completion of the revised Bolsa Família payment cycle for all families on 21 October.