Brazil Advances Bill to Strengthen Crackdown on Illegal Betting Operators

The government of Brazil continues to ramp up its fight against illegal betting with the approval of Bill No. 4.044/2025 by the Finance and Taxation Committee of the Chamber of Deputies. The bill calls for the development of a Legal Framework for Combating the Illegal Gaming and Betting Market while amending Law No. 14.790/2023, regulating the fixed-odds betting activities in the country.

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The project was introduced to the parliament in August 2025 by deputies Paulo Litro, Raimundo Santos, and Merlong Solano. Deputy Laura Carneiro held rapporteurship of the bill before its approval by the Finance and Taxation Committee.

The introduction of the bill is yet another important step towards combating the illegal gambling industry in the country after previous measures, including the adoption of Law No. 15.358/2026 (the Jungmann Law) and Resolution No. 569/2026 (Anatel).

Banks, Payment Institutions, and Financial Services Firms Receive New Responsibilities

One of the key pillars of the bill is related to the increase of responsibilities for banks, payment institutions, and other financial organizations involved in the Brazilian betting market.

Specifically, the bill envisages enhanced due diligence for financial organizations authorized by the Central Bank of Brazil aimed at the prevention of illegal transactions with unauthorized operators.

The bill also requires banks and other companies providing financial services to submit reports every month on their activities associated with gambling, including aggregated information about transactional volume, number of accounts involved in gambling, internal controls, and blocked/rejected operations.

In addition, banks and payment institutions will become integrated into electronic fraud-monitoring systems, allowing the sharing of information about unauthorized operators.

The Ministry of Finance will keep updating a publicly available database of all the illegal operators while allowing institutions to compare the received data with the help of anti-fraud systems.

Controls on Brazil’s Payment Infrastructure Are Expanded

Several new measures related to control over the country’s payment infrastructure, including the regulation of usage of Pix, are envisaged in the bill.

Among these measures are special transaction categories applicable exclusively to gambling and limited solely to the authorized operators, automated filters using business activity code and Pix key, integration with risk management and self-exclusion systems, and labels for gambling transactions on the interface.

The bill also seeks to ban all kinds of operational, technological, and commercial partnership between banks and illegal operators, including but not limited to Banking-as-a-Service, payment gateways, sub-acquiring, and any other infrastructure facilitating gambling transactions.

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Another important provision of the bill concerns Anatel’s authority to block the web resources operated by illegal betting companies in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance.

According to the bill, there will be allowed different technical measures of domain blocking, such as DNS blocking, IP blocking, SNI filtering, and a mirror site detection system.

New Criminal Offenses and Penalties Are Introduced

Finally, the bill introduces several new criminal offenses associated with conducting illegal betting transactions under gambling laws of Brazil.

Such actions may lead to imprisonment and a fine including operating an illegal fixed-odds betting service, providing financing to illegal betting activities, money transfer between bettors and illegal operator, advertising for illegal betting sites, and obstruction of measures of blocking the illegal domain.

Special aggravating circumstances are provided in the case of repeat violations, corporation’s engagement, the use of anonymity tools, offshore operation, illegal advertisements targeting children, and the involvement of digital influencers.

In addition, the bill extends the number of violations stipulated by Law No. 14.790/2023 with advertising for an illegal operator and providing technical support for illegal gambling operations.

The bill also grants the Ministry of Finance the right to demand geolocation-based blocking of access to illegal domains and applications from users situated abroad or using VPN technologies.

Constitution and Justice Committee

The approval of the bill by the Finance and Taxation Committee paves the way for the next phase of the legislative procedure.

After the constitutional review carried out by the Constitution and Justice Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, Bill No. 4.044/2025 can be discussed in a plenary session of the Chamber and later sent to the Federal Senate.

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Source: SBC Noticias