Brazil creates a Federal Police unit to target illegal betting and match-fixing

Brazil’s Federal Police now has a dedicated unit for illegal betting and sports-result manipulation, created by the Ministry of Justice and Public Security under Ordinance No. 1.325, dated October 9, 2026 and published on October 13 in the Official Gazette. For high-risk operators and payment providers, the point is simple: Brazil is treating betting-related financial crime as a standing law-enforcement priority, not an ad hoc side issue.

1. The new unit is called the Division for the Repression of Illegal Betting and Sports Manipulation (DRAME), and it includes a Betting Analysis Service (SEAAP). It is the first time the Federal Police’s organizational chart has contained a dedicated area for this sector; the previous version, updated through July, did not include one.
2. DRAME sits inside the General Coordination for the Repression of Money Laundering and Asset Recovery (CGLA), which is also new. CGLA reports to the Directorate for Investigation and Combating Organized Crime and Corruption (DICOR), signaling that the police are framing illegal betting primarily as a money-laundering and financial-crime problem.
3. The structure has also been tightened compared with the original proposal. Federal Police Director General Andrei Rodrigues had submitted a plan with two separate divisions, one for illegal betting and one for sports manipulation, but the final version merged them into a single unit.
4. The Federal Police said the reorganization is meant to strengthen the economic fight against organized crime by putting money laundering repression, financial intelligence, asset recovery, and illegal gambling enforcement under one command.
5. The move lands under Provisional Measure No. 1.394/2026, known as the “Provisional Measure on Betting,” issued on September 25, which bans fixed-odds betting in Brazil. The decree supporting the ordinance was signed five days later. Before this change, “illegal betting” meant operating without authorization from the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA/MF); those unlicensed operations already exceeded 40% of the market after 22 months of regulation. Now, according to the text, all sports betting and online gaming supply in Brazil is operating underground.

There is also a budgetary wrinkle: revenue from regulated betting had been funding public security pools, including the Federal Police itself. With the ban in place, the institution gets a new enforcement remit while the regulated channel that helped finance it disappears.