Brazil justice ministry presents police operations at hearing on proposed betting ban

Brazil's Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP) used its time at a public hearing in the ADI 8027 case to present figures from three of its secretariats. The hearing was convened by Minister Luiz Fux, the rapporteur of the case.

Senasp, the ministry's public security secretariat, presented 236 Civil and Federal Police operations carried out between January 2022 and September 2026. According to the figures presented, the operations involved more than 480 arrests, more than 1,600 search warrants and R$17.8bn in judicial orders. Senasp offered the operations in support of the argument that regulation did not protect society.

A Senasp representative said Provisional Measure 1.394 ends the fog between legal and illegal betting, which he said hampered the work of Coaf, the police and social networks. The Senasp secretary said that behind the thousands of illegal sites there are only hundreds of company and individual taxpayer numbers, all subject to blocking requests to the Central Bank and financial institutions. Senasp also said it waives betting revenue for public security, since about 80% of the National Public Security Fund's gambling revenue comes from fixed-odds betting.

The ministry's digital rights secretariat, Sedigi, presented 36,905 website takedown requests between 25 September and 29 October, more than 2,500 profiles removed from a social network and more than 1,252 Telegram groups. The digital rights secretary said Provisional Measure 1.394 was the first Brazilian rule to identify and map the risks of betting. National consumer secretary Ricardo Morishita invoked the Consumer Defence Code to argue that a product he described as highly harmful and dangerous cannot remain on the market.

The commentary faults the Senasp secretary for leaving out that most of the operations he cited were aimed at the illegal market. According to the commentary, the federal regulated market opened only in January 2025, so three of the almost five years the operations cover fall in the unregulated era. The secretary described "muitas" operations as reaching authorised platforms, the commentary notes, but he gave no figure. The commentary adds that the ministry's three secretaries together spoke for roughly 15 minutes without presenting data on bettors moving to the illegal market, blocked accounts or money recovered.

The commentary said the economic regulation laboratory of UERJ, another guest at the same hearing, had cited earlier rules on betting financing, advertising and youth competitions.