Senator Hiran Gonçalves gave an update on the progress of the Bets CPI. The CPI has already held 21 meetings and approved 312 requests, including breaches of confidentiality and analyses of documents from financial institutions and regulatory bodies.
The senator stated that today 79 platforms are regularized with the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA), which is linked to the Ministry of Treasury. However, the Federal Revenue Service calculates retroactive amounts owed by those that operated informally. In Brazil, the regulation of the sector took place on January 1, 2025.
According to Hiran Gonçalves, debts from previous years were also identified in some companies. “We identified that many companies operated without paying taxes between 2018 and 2023, a period before the sector was regulated,” he explained.
Regarding the work of the Commission, Hiran mentioned that the CPI faces obstacles, such as habeas corpus granted to influencers and executives in the sector. “Targets such as Deolane Bezerra and Adélia Advogada did not appear, but we have access to financial and intelligence data,” said Gonçalves.
In return, to combat the problem, the senator presented two projects. The first is a Bill that prohibits some online games (such as “Tigrinho”) and restricts betting on sporting events.
At the same time, Dr. Hiran wants to allocate resources from the revenue from fixed-odds bets to expand healthcare facilities for people with gambling addiction, that is, those addicted to these games.
The second project presented by him determines the expansion of the SUS network. In this case, 1% of the sector’s revenue is allocated to create outpatient clinics for the treatment of gambling disorders.
The senator linked the need for retroactive collection of betting revenue to the INSS deficit: “Part of the resources can compensate for losses caused by fraud, such as the diversion of pensions and irregular payment of BPC to foreigners.”
Extension of the Bets CPI
The extension of the Bets CPI for forty-five days was made official by the president of the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre, in the plenary session on April 30.
The time is shorter than the 130-day extension advocated by the rapporteur, Senator Soraya Thronicke. However, it will allow the CPI to present its final result by mid-June.
