Brazil’s June 19 decree closes the enforcement gap on illegal betting flows

Brazil has now formally assigned the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA), under the Ministry of Finance, the job of defining and supervising the illegal betting market. For PSPs, acquirers, and banks, the practical point is simple: the government has created a clear chain of responsibility for blocking funds tied to unlicensed betting operators.

1. The decree signed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Friday, June 19, ends the uncertainty over which authority was responsible for policing the financial flows of clandestine betting operators in Brazil. Fabio Macorin, deputy secretary of Prizes and Bets at the Ministry of Finance and SPA’s number two, said that before the decree “it was not clear whether it was our responsibility or the Central Bank’s to supervise who was receiving money from illegal bets.”
2. Under the new framework, the SPA will notify financial institutions that are receiving funds from illegal betting activity and will also inform the Central Bank and Receita Federal. Once notified, the bank or payment institution must immediately block the funds in the irregular operator’s accounts. In other words: the compliance question is no longer theoretical, and the freeze instruction now has an owner.
3. The blocked revenue will go to the National Public Security Fund, linked to the Ministry of Justice. The ministry will then begin the process that gives the suspected companies the right to contest the action. The Central Bank will oversee whether financial institutions comply with the orders. Macorin also said that if a financial institution fails to comply, Receita Federal will step in and make it pay the taxes that the illegal betting operator should have paid, with joint liability applying.
4. The decree also requires retroactive tax payment for illegal betting activity. The government defines as clandestine those platforms that did not go through the Finance Ministry’s licensing process. These operators are said to avoid a R$ 30 million fee to the government, taxes, advertising rules, and the self-exclusion system, which already prevents 700,000 registered people from accessing licensed betting platforms.
5. On the day the decree was signed, Finance Minister Dario Durigan said that more than 50,000 platforms, belonging to around 300 companies, had been taken down. For payment firms touching Brazil’s betting flows, that number matters less as a headline than as a reminder that enforcement is now being organized around identifiable intermediaries, not just the operators themselves.