Ministry's note:
LEGAL SECURITY
After a 4-year vacuum, the government will regulate the activities of betting sites in Brazil. Absence of rules causes, since 2019, annual loss between R$ 6 billion and R$ 8 billion (US$ 1.16 and US$ 1.55 billion).
The Ministry of Finance is about to send a proposal to the Civil House to regulate the operation of betting sites in Brazil. Although the activity has been authorized in the country since the enactment of Law nº 13,756, at the end of 2018, the regulatory vacuum (that is, the lack of detail on how the law should be applied) has, in practice, turned the sector into an activity without rules to be followed.
The regulation will legalize the activity and put an end to legal uncertainty. The package provides for the publication of a Provisional Measure (PM) and ordinances, detailing all the requirements for the operation of betting sites in the country, with clear rules established in specific normative acts.
There is a series of losses generated by this omission that lasted four years. One of the implications is the estimated loss of between R$ 6 billion and R$ 8 billion (US$ 1.16 and US$ 1.55 billion) per year to public coffers. This is because, without the regulation, the Federal Government was prevented from charging taxes and fees on this activity that moves, according to estimates, billions of reais annually.
The lack of regulation and collection of fees also meant that Brazil had stopped structuring and maintaining a network for monitoring suspicious behavior (with penalties for those responsible), protecting the sporting integrity of situations such as attempts to manipulate game results. It is a system that will also defend bettors and companies in the segment.
The regulation will also demand that the betting sites be headquartered in Brazil (today, they are abroad), improving the inspection, the collection and the dialogue with the agents that work in the sector, also intending to curb that the bets are used as a means of carrying out money laundering.
José Francisco Manssur, special adviser to the Executive Secretariat of the Ministry of Finance, explains that the regulation of the law that deals with betting sites is taking place under broad discussion with the most diverse institutions involved. In other words, the debate has already involved, among others, the Ministry of Sport, the Central Bank (which oversees the remittance of funds abroad), the Federal Police, the Public Ministry, the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB), companies interested in operating the betting system in Brazil, betting associations, and monitoring companies.
According to Manssur, inspection will also rely on international technological solutions. Bets under suspicion of manipulation will be officiated to the sites and competitions may be blocked, curbing fraud and preventing crimes.
Recently, the Justice of Goiás state condemned a businessman from Anápolis who applied a scam through sports betting on the internet, for embezzlement (a crime provided for in article 171 of the Penal Code).
Cases like this will be lessened with the regulation of fixed-quota betting (sports results) that the Federal Government will carry out, overcoming a gap, the lack of collection and the impossibility of inspection that came from 2018, when sports betting in the country was made legal in Brazil.
Fonte: UOL
