Mexico’s federal gaming law reform enters final executive review as 13 casinos are closed

Mexico’s proposed overhaul of the Federal Games and Raffles Law, first announced in September 2025, is nearing the end of its executive review and is headed next to the security cabinet. For casinos, betting operators, and their payment providers, that matters because the regulatory reset is arriving alongside enforcement action on money laundering and tax evasion.

1. Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez said during the morning press conference at Palacio Nacional that the internal review across federal agencies is “practically concluded.” The next step is submission to the security cabinet, which is required before the draft can formally move to Congress.
2. Rodríguez said the text has already been reviewed by different parts of the federal government, putting the reform in its final stretch before the legislative debate begins. The original announcement came in September 2025.
3. She also said that, since the start of the current administration, she met with permit holders from the two main gaming industries to set the operating terms. In that meeting, she warned them not to bribe ministry staff, under threat of business closures and imprisonment for any officials involved in irregularities. In exchange, the government committed to pushing through pending sector filings.
4. Rodríguez added that she has no representatives or intermediaries dealing with the industry, a clear signal that informal channels are not part of the arrangement. For PSPs and acquirers, that is the sort of line that usually precedes a stricter paper trail.
5. On enforcement, she said sanctions and closures have been applied over alleged links to money laundering and tax fraud, in coordination with the Attorney General’s Office and the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Finance. The officially acknowledged figure is 13 closed casinos, though she estimated the real number of irregular venues could be around 20.

The regulatory push is happening in parallel with new anti-money-laundering rules published by the Ministry of Finance in the Diario Oficial de la Federación under the Federal Law for the Prevention and Identification of Operations with Illicit Proceeds (LFPIORPI). For high-risk payment flows, that usually means more scrutiny, more documentation, and less room for the “we’ll sort it out later” approach that gaming operators sometimes prefer.