The Minister of Institutional Relations, José Guimarães, told the CNN 360 programme that the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had only just begun internal discussions on what to do about fixed-odds betting platforms,” in Brazil.
“The government has started to discuss this, we still do not have a defined position on what to do,” he said, before adding that any solution would have to be one of two options: “either it ends, or we adopt a radical regulation.” The minister linked the discussion explicitly to the new debt-renegotiation programme, noting that the executive had already moved to prevent users who restructure their debts from migrating to online betting sites.
The Ministry of Finance had launched the second version of Desenrola Brasil on Monday 4 May, with a central feature that beneficiaries of the programme are blocked from licensed online betting platforms for one year.
The Finance Ministry’s executive secretary, Rogério Ceron, told CNN Brasil that betting had contributed to the recent rise in household indebtedness, and argued that the platform block would help to prevent renegotiated borrowers from taking on new debt: “Betting played a role in the growth of indebtedness in the recent period. A joint approach with a prohibition on using these platforms will help so that they do not become indebted again, that they do not commit their income to placing bets and, in more extreme cases, take out credit operations to bet.”
Guimarães took office as Minister of Institutional Relations on 14 April 2026. In November while serving as the government’s leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Guimarães presented a bill (PL 5817/2025) that would create the National Strategy for Combating Gambling Addiction, a set of actions aimed at the prevention, detection, and treatment of gambling addiction in the country.
In his justification for the new bill the lawmaker argued that “the exponential growth of betting platforms in Brazil, especially those conducted through electronic channels, has raised serious concerns in the public health, social protection, and financial security domains of the population.” Guimarães argued that although the sector has recently been regulated “a significant gap remains in the Brazilian legal framework.”
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The Minister of Institutional Relations, José Guimarães, told the CNN 360 programme that the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had only just begun internal discussions on what to do about fixed-odds betting platforms,” in Brazil. “The government has started to discuss this, we still do not have a defined position on what…
The post Minister says Brazil must “end or radically regulate” online betting as Desenrola rolls out appeared first on G3 Newswire.