In his speech before the United Nations General Assembly, the Brazilian president emphasized the need to work towards building a better regulated and safer market for bettors.
Brazil.- Within the framework of the United Nations General Assembly (UN), Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva addressed the regulation of online gambling that is being carried out in Brazil following the enactment, at the end of last year, of Law 14.790.
Lula emphasized the need to create a clear and transparent regulatory framework to prevent crimes associated with money laundering or criminal activities, but also issued a warning about the need for the lower strata of the population not to fall into debt due to problematic use of gambling.
“Brazil has always been against casinos, of any kind of gambling. Today, through the cellphone, gambling is in the family home, in the living room,” reflected Lula, then adding: “We are noticing in Brazil the indebtedness of the poorest who try to earn money by making bets. It is a problem that we will have to regulate, otherwise soon we will have a casino operating in the kitchen of every home.”
The Brazilian president also referred to the misleading advertising that proliferates around betting platforms, especially through social networks that promote the creation of false ideas about the potential earnings that can be obtained. “We are seeing madness. The monetization of lies through the digital network. With people becoming billionaires, millionaires promoting gambling,” he warned.
This is not the first time that the Brazilian president has shown his disapproval of gambling. In June, in the context of the debate of Bill 2.234/22, which regulates casinos and gambling in the country, Lula had stated that he was against it, but that if the law prospered in its parliamentary debate, he would not veto it, among other things, because of the resources and economic boost it would mean for state coffers. In this sense, Lula draws a line between not supporting gambling and the criminalization of the same.
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Regarding online gambling, the Brazilian government began last week with tasks to move towards a more transparent market and combat illegal betting sites that continue to operate. In this sense, the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA), dependent on the Ministry of Finance, published an ordinance that prohibits the operation of betting sites without authorization or that have not submitted an application to the federal government by October 1. Therefore, only those with prior authorization issued by the agency itself will be able to operate.
The fixed-odds betting companies that have not yet applied for authorization to operate will see their operations suspended as of October 1. According to the Ordinance, from next month until the end of December, only betting companies that are already operating and that have applied for authorization to explore the fixed-odds lottery modality will be able to operate.
To advance in this process of separating legal companies from those operating outside of all control, the SPA will also carry out a mapping of the betting market in order to more fully understand the real situation of the industry.
