The Central Bank sees obstacles to gathering detailed data on sports betting spending by people receiving the Continuous Cash Benefit (BPC). The study was mentioned by the president of INSS, Alessandro Stefanutto, who advocates restricting the use of the program's resources on online gaming sites.
In an interview with the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo, Stefanutto said he would ask the monetary authority to survey how much of the BPC ended up in bets, which has not yet been done. However, the assessment behind the scenes of the agency is that it will be difficult to make this cross-referencing due to the banking secrecy that protects financial transactions. After the "Pix crisis," a Provisional Measure (MP) was even issued to reinforce this constitutional protection.
The BPC is an assistance benefit of one minimum wage (currently R$ 1,518) paid by the INSS to disabled people and low-income elderly precisely to reduce poverty. To GLOBO, the president of INSS said that the idea is being studied internally to understand if the transfer of beneficiaries to bets is a problem, but it has not yet been presented to the government. To the BC, the agency would ask to verify by CPF the amount of the benefit that has been transferred to bets, but without identifying the people.
"People have every right to bet, including with other benefits, such as retirement, which the person paid to have. However, not the BPC. It is paid by society, by the budget of Social Security, it has a specific purpose. therefore creating a layer of this for something responsible is important," comments Stefanutto.
Stefanutto said they are evaluating whether it is possible, legally and technically, to make this blockage of the use of the benefit in bets. The expenditure on sports betting is already prohibited for INSS beneficiaries who advance R$ 150 of retirements or aids monthly without interest. According to Stefanutto, the banks that operate this advance manage to block payments to bets.
Recently, the Attorney General's Office (AGU) told Minister Luiz Fux of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) that there are technical difficulties in preventing bets with money and social programs, such as identifying in the accounts of the beneficiaries which resources come from the benefits and which come from other sources of income. Fux had determined that the government adopt measures to prohibit spending on bets with money from social programs.
Last year, the BC released a technical note with preliminary estimates of spending on bets through Pix data. According to the study, 5 million people belonging to families benefiting from Bolsa Família sent R$ 3 billion to betting companies using the Pix platform.
At the time, the BC decided to conduct the analysis to understand if there was a part of the increase in family income that was "leaking" to bets, instead of being used for consumption or investment. Any information, even if preliminary, could help the monetary authority understand the behavior of inflation. The document ended up becoming public and caused great commotion.
Through the Access to Information Law (LAI), the monetary authority stated that it has a Cooperation Agreement with the Ministry of Social Assistance, responsible for Bolsa Família, for actions of financial citizenship, such as studies, elaboration and implementation of initiatives and public policies.
Sought, the Ministry of Finance said it would not comment.
Source: O Globo
