Lula sanctions law to block illegal betting accounts in Brazil
Last Tuesday, March 24, 2026, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sanctioned the so-called Anti-Faction Law, a regulation designed to strengthen the fight against organized crime and militias in the country. Within this new legal framework, critical provisions have been integrated that directly aim to dismantle the financial structure of unauthorized betting. The legislation amends Law 14.790/2023 and establishes that financial and payment institutions are now obliged to block deposit accounts and any registration in the name of operators acting irregularly in the Brazilian market.
This new ordinance requires payment entities to prevent any transaction that seeks to enable, either directly or indirectly, the operation of unlicensed fixed-odds betting lotteries. Although the measure is forceful, the law clarifies that the blocking must respect due administrative process, guaranteeing the right to defense of the interested parties. Furthermore, it specifies that these actions should not prejudice the reimbursement of amounts legitimately belonging to bettors. The definition of technical procedures for executing these blockings will be under the joint supervision of the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance.
Funds declared as forfeited to the Union, including those collected from fines, taxes, and penalties derived from illegal activity, will be allocated to the National Public Security Fund. This fund is the government's main tool for financing operations and citizen protection strategies throughout the national territory. In this way, the State seeks to reinvest assets derived from informal gambling directly into strengthening public security.
In the area of digital oversight, the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) of the Ministry of Finance will assume the task of receiving and managing information on indications of electronic fraud in the sector. The SPA will maintain a public database with the list of authorized operators, which will serve to feed and cross-reference information with banks' fraud prevention systems. Likewise, institutions participating in the Pix system must develop and apply detection mechanisms to identify suspicious usage patterns linked to unauthorized betting, following the technical guidelines of the Central Bank.
The legislation also introduces a component of responsibility for those who participate in the promotion chain of these platforms. Influencers, advertising agencies, and marketing companies may be sanctioned administratively and legally if they disseminate or monetize content from illegal betting, provided there is unequivocal knowledge of the operator's irregularity. According to the regulation, this knowledge is taken for granted if there is a prior formal notification, an administrative decision, or if the irregular status of the promoted agent is publicly known through official channels.
Tags: Brazil, online betting Brazil, illegal gambling Brazil, blocking illegal casino accounts, Lula da Silva