The Permanent Commission of the Congress of the Union received a draft resolution on 13 May 2026 calling on the Interior Ministry to publish, in open-data format, every permit issued to the country’s casinos and sportsbooks, and to name every authorised online betting platform operating in Mexico.
The proposal comes from Federal Deputy Rubén Ignacio Moreira Valdez of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). It targets the Interior Ministry (Secretaría de Gobernación, SEGOB) and, specifically, its Directorate-General of Games and Draws. The permits at issue cover what Mexican law calls Centros de Apuestas Remotas y Salas de Sorteos — remote betting centres and number-draw halls, or CARSS — described in the text as “commonly known as casinos”. Moreira frames the request as a measure to strengthen the fight against money laundering in the betting and lottery sector.
The underlying Federal Law on Games and Draws has been in force since 31 December 1947. It gives SEGOB exclusive power to regulate every form of wagering and lottery activity in Mexico, with the sole exception of the National Lottery, and, as the proposal notes, “does not contemplate the online betting modality”.
A 2023 audit by the Federal Superior Audit Office, cited in the text, recorded that SEGOB issued 5,336 betting and lottery permits between 2019 and 2023. Of those, 51 covered CARSS and were held by 36 permit holders, who in turn reported revenue from 422 establishments.
The proposal then turns to the anti-money-laundering case for transparency. Between January and September 2025, the Treasury’s Financial Intelligence Unit recorded 351,236 vulnerable-activity reports linked to gambling — 14.6 per cent more than a year earlier — with total movements of at least 25.6 billion pesos to November 2025. On 13 November 2025, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 27 individuals and companies and identified ten gambling houses in Mexico, with at least two million US dollars allegedly laundered between 2017 and 2024.
Moreira sets out the sector’s risk profile in blunt terms. “Although CARSS represent income for the State, this is also a high-risk sector for the commission of operations with funds of illicit origin,” he writes. The heavy use of cash through chips, he argues, makes establishments “an ideal vehicle to introduce organised-crime money into the formal financial system”. Opacity over the universe of permits, the text adds, amounts to “a structural vulnerability that may negatively impact the Mexican State’s rating and its international financial reputation” ahead of the next Financial Action Task Force mutual evaluation.
The four operative points ask SEGOB to publish every valid CARSS permit with full holder details and authorised modalities, and to set out by state which establishments are currently operating, suspended or have been subject to closure in the last five years. They also call on the ministry to disclose the universe of authorised electronic betting platforms, including permit holders and the domains they cover, and to carry out supervision of CARSS to prevent operations involving illicit funds.
The post Mexico’s Congress demands open-data register of every casino and online betting permit appeared first on G3 Newswire.
The Permanent Commission of the Congress of the Union received a draft resolution on 13 May 2026 calling on the Interior Ministry to publish, in open-data format, every permit issued to the country’s casinos and sportsbooks, and to name every authorised online betting platform operating in Mexico. The proposal comes from Federal Deputy Rubén Ignacio…
The post Mexico’s Congress demands open-data register of every casino and online betting permit appeared first on G3 Newswire.