By the time you finish reading this article, R$53,000 (US$ 11,000) will have been withheld from public coffers. At the end of the day, R$41.6 million (US$ 8.6m), at the rate of R$1.73 million (US$ 360,000) per hour.
The Brazilian State annually loses up to R$ 15 billion (US$ 3.1b) in taxes that sports betting operators fail to pay and remit to their headquarters in tax havens.
Money circulates without the Central Bank preventing it. Formidable omission! Was Pix created to move criminal fortunes?
Tax evasion is not even the biggest problem. Part of the money feeds the trafficking of drugs, weapons and people. Legend has it that in a southern state there is a safe box with R$12 billion (US$ 2.5b) in cash, laundered daily.
Brazil is the last major market for this sector. In one year, there were 15 billion online interactions worldwide, 3 billion of them (20%!) here.
How did we get to this bizarre situation?
In 2018, at the end of the Temer government, Congress approved Law 13,756, with a two-year deadline for regulation —extendable for two more—, providing for how taxes would be paid. Considering themselves guaranteed by an incomplete law, dozens, and then hundreds, of companies (and offenders, such as bicheiros – operators of jogo do bicho) began to operate online betting, based outside Brazil.
Four years later, companies operate irregularly, advertising and sponsoring sports clubs, with the argument that the law exists and they do not pay taxes because the government does not say how.
There are other ingredients in this recipe: non-regulation has always been prevented by the rotten part, which prefers to harm the gambler, not pay taxes and use the money for its criminal activities.
The well-intentioned technicians of the Brazilian State in the former Ministry of Economy prepared a good decree, regulating how the sector would function and how taxes would be paid —and, at the request of the good part of the market, also a provisional measure (PM) containing severe penalties for those who insisted to operate outside the law.
The two documents —the decree and the PM— were forwarded to the Civil House of the Bolsonaro government. But a powerful criminal lobby operated alongside politicians and the president himself. And he —through omission or connivance— did not regulate the law.
The omission —another crime of responsibility— was detected in the transitional government. Once the current government took office, Minister Haddad convinced President Lula that betting would have to be regulated. A technical team was designated and, unfortunately, merged the decree with the PM, with the greedy objective of doubling taxes. Naive initiative, which should fall in Congress.
Worse: when he renounced the decree and handed over the decision to Congress, he fell into the trap of political games and vested interests on the part of Parliament — creating difficulties to sell facilities.
Who cares about non-regulation?
To the television and digital media bodies, which convey the propaganda of irregular sites, half a billion reais a year? Certainly not, as regulation would provide transparency and security to the business.
To sports clubs that show sponsorship of irregular sites on their shirts? Neither, because the regulation will allow clubs to be privileged actors in the business, with additional income.
To gamblers, currently victims of fraud, non-payment of winning bets, match manipulation? Neither, obviously.
Certified international platforms that operate legally in several countries? Neither. (The main ones refuse to enter Brazil and are awaiting regulation).
Conclusion: non-regulation only interests criminals, those who will not be able to get accreditation, drug, arms and people traffickers.
Hence, then, the inconvenient question, which goes to President Lula. It doesn't matter whether by decree, bill or provisional measure: when will betting be regulated? How long will this absurd, bizarre and criminal situation persist?
Not to regulate is to tolerate crime.
Luiz Fernando Immediate
Writer, journalist and publisher of Geração Editorial
Source: Folha de S.Paulo
