Brazil’s gambling MP is in the final legal review, with Lula set to decide on ad limits, online casino ban, or a full digital betting veto

Official calendars show the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA), the Solicitor General’s office (AGU), and the Civil House legal team in the endgame of the draft. For high-risk operators, the point is not the rhetoric from New York: the point is that the wording is now moving through the last legal checkpoints before Lula decides on Wednesday (23).

1. On Tuesday (22), while Lula was in New York for the opening of the 81st United Nations General Assembly, SPA secretary Daniele Correa Cardoso attended two government meetings on the measure. The first ran from 11:02 to 11:42 on the 4th floor of the Palácio do Planalto, with Civil House deputy chief of staff Francisca Lucileide de Carvalho and Special Secretary for Legal Affairs (SAJ) Marcelo Weick Pogliese, plus senior officials from the Ministry of Justice and the SPA’s technical team.
2. The second meeting, held virtually from 15:00 to 16:00, was broader. It brought together the SAJ, the Secretariat of Government Analysis (SAG), and the Secretariat of Articulation and Monitoring (SAM), all within the Civil House, along with Secom, MJSP, the SPA, the National Treasury Attorney’s Office (PGFN), and the Attorney General’s Office (AGU).
3. The line-up matters because it maps the draft’s maturity. SAJ is the last stop for legal and legislative review, so its presence in both meetings suggests the text is already in final legal polishing rather than policy brainstorming.
4. The SPA was also in the room, including secretary Daniele Correa Cardoso, deputy secretary Fabio Macorin, and the regulation and supervision team. That complicates a report from Estadão last week that the MP was being written by the Planalto’s political core without the Fazenda technicians who regulate the sector. In the final stretch, the regulator was brought in.
5. The Ministry of Justice’s Digital Rights Secretariat attended both meetings, pointing to possible digital-environment provisions: platform blocking, rules for online advertising and influencers, and an interface with the Digital ECA, which Lula mentioned at the UN. AGU and PGFN being called in also signals that the draft is being stress-tested on legal and collection issues, not just political messaging.

On paper, the government still has three routes: tighten advertising, ban online casino, or veto all digital betting. For PSPs, acquirers, and banking partners, those are not subtle differences — they determine whether the regime becomes narrower marketing rules, a product-category ban, or a broader shutdown of the digital stack.