Esmeralda Britton González, Vice-President of the Legislative Assembly and the former executive president of the state lottery operator and social welfare funding agency Junta de Protección Social (JPS), filed Expediente 25.600, a bill that would rewrite the country’s gambling framework and turn the JPS into the sole regulator of every form of game of chance in the country.
The bill is titled, in full, the Law for the Strengthening and Modernisation of the Competences of the Junta de Protección Social and the Regulation of Games of Chance in the Framework of Security and the Fight against Organised Crime. It has three co-proponents from the ruling Pueblo Soberano party and has been referred to the Permanent Commission on Citizen Education and Political Control.
The case Britton made for the reform turns on the size of the unauthorised market. Roughly 53 per cent of all lottery and sports-betting activity in Costa Rica, she argued in the bill’s preamble, takes place outside the JPS framework, costing the social-protection system an estimated 297,000 million colones in lost revenue each year. The JPS funds more than 500 programmes for older people, persons with disabilities and public health services, and Britton presented the bill as a defence of those programmes rather than a revenue measure for the state. “Modernising the JPS is not optional,” she said. “It is an obligation, to defend social programmes and close spaces for illegality.”
In substance the bill does four things. It recognises the JPS in two distinct roles: as a direct operator of pre-printed and electronic lotteries, sports betting and video-lottery products, and as the sole supervisory and inspection authority over the entire gambling sector. It introduces a technology layer: software audits, real-time monitoring of operators’ platforms and certification of the algorithms used to determine outcomes. It mandates coordinated work between the JPS, the Costa Rican Drug Institute (ICD), the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) and the Council of Financial System Supervision (CONASSIF) on anti-money-laundering controls, and obliges internet service providers to geo-block platforms that operate without a JPS licence.
The bill also reforms the criminal code. A new Article 249 bis would impose prison sentences of two to six years on any person who, without a licence and for economic benefit, organises, administers, commercialises or finances pre-printed or electronic lotteries, sports betting, video-lottery products or any other game of chance. The earlier Expediente 25.057, on broadly similar ground, was given a negative report in committee in January 2026; Expediente 25.600 is the second attempt this congressional term.
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Esmeralda Britton González, Vice-President of the Legislative Assembly and the former executive president of the state lottery operator and social welfare funding agency Junta de Protección Social (JPS), filed Expediente 25.600, a bill that would rewrite the country’s gambling framework and turn the JPS into the sole regulator of every form of game of chance in…
The post Lawmaker files sweeping overhaul to criminalise illegal gambling in Costa Rica appeared first on G3 Newswire.