Brazil’s AGU sues 17 betting operators in Pernambuco, seeks R$1 billion for health damages

Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office (AGU) has filed a civil public action against 17 online betting operators, asking for compensation tied to harm to public health and reimbursement for the public health system. For high-risk payment businesses, the point is simple: this is now a legal claim against operators that the AGU says account for about 80% of Brazil’s fixed-odds betting market.

1. The action was filed on Monday (28/9) in the Federal Court in Pernambuco, and it is the first time the federal government has sued companies in the betting sector since Lula’s government vetoed online betting houses and banned the operation of the companies then authorized, a measure announced on Friday (25/9) in São Paulo.
2. The AGU is asking for three forms of compensation: reimbursement of Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) expenses for treatments related to pathological gambling, with the exact amount to be calculated at the end of the case; collective moral damages of at least R$1 billion; and double repayment of amounts bet by people diagnosed with ludopathy (pathological gambling disorder).
3. According to preliminary studies by the Ministry of Health, the damage to SUS is at least R$2.6 billion, the AGU said. The agency also cited a Ministry of Finance estimate that in 2025 betting took R$62.5 million out of family budgets, a figure it links to over-indebtedness.
4. The AGU said 10.9 million of the 28 million Brazilians who currently bet show risky or problematic gambling patterns. It also said SUS treatments related to pathological and excessive gambling grew by approximately 140% between January 2018 and December 2025.
5. The lawsuit was filed in Pernambuco because the AGU says the Northeast concentrates more vulnerable groups for risky gambling and is one of the places where the impact is strongest. The agency also argued that the compensation currently required by law is too small: the rule sends 0.12% of mandatory betting allocations to the Ministry of Health, which amounted to R$50 million last year.

If the court rules in favor of the AGU, each affected consumer will have to prove they meet the conditions set by the court and then seek payment through an enforcement action. For PSPs and acquirers, the useful signal is not the lawsuit mechanics alone but the scale: the state is targeting operators that it says cover most of the market, and it is doing so on a health-cost theory rather than only on tax or licensing grounds.