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The Chamber of Deputies approved early yesterday night (16), the urgent requeriment to vote on the replacement to Bill 442/91, which legalizes casinos, bingo, jogo do bicho, slot machines, horse racing betting and sports betting. The approval of the requeriment represents the biggest advance in recent years towards the legalization of the gaming sector in Brazil.
The replacement for Bill 442/91 was prepared by the Working Group (WG) created by the president of the House, Deputy Arthur Lira (PP-AL), composed of 13 members, headed by Deputy Bacelar (Pode-BA) and Felipe Carreras (PSB-PE) in the report.
For three months, the WG met with various sectors of society and government agencies, such as Coaf, Federal Police, Public Ministry and Federal Revenue, among others, to seek subsidies for the preparation of the report.
In the first week of December, Arthur Lira scheduled the vote on the urgent requeriment for the 13th. The evangelical bench put pressure and threatened to obstruct all votes if it was discussed.
After several meetings and negotiations between bench leaders, the topic was voted on this Thursday (16), and even with the opposing position of the Evangelical bench, with absurd and childish allegations against the activity, the application was voted and approved by an immense majority (293 votes in favor and only 138 against).
Before putting the request to vote, President Arthur Lira stated that upon being elected, he committed himself to all benches to vote on topics of interest to society and that there was no negotiation to vote on a particular topic only if another was voted. He said this due to accusations by evangelicals that, in exchange for the church's IPTU exemption from payment, the bench would not obstruct the vote on the urgent requeriment for discussion of the Gaming Framework.
“This issue of the legalization of gaming in Brazil has been debated for a long time. Whoever defends legalization will say why, and whoever opposes it will say why,” said Lira in an interview after voting on the urgent requeriment.
For him, “legalization has to be done in an open way, with a lot of debate. As we discuss it, we’ll see who wants gaming to remain illegal as it is today. Everyone knows that there are casinos, bingos, slot machines, virtual bets debited from people’s credit card and paid abroad and jogo do bicho. But does it have to exist underground to continue without generating formal jobs in Brazil and without paying roughly R$20 to R$25 billion in taxes?”, he asked.
Source: GMB
