The AGU asks the SPA for Polymarket's blocking history
The question that the Attorney General's Office (AGU) posed to the Ministry of Finance is uncomfortable: what has been done so far with Polymarket. The agency requested a technical and legal report from the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) on the status of the company, and specifically wants to know what controls were implemented and what sanctions were applied against the platform and its partners, in addition to what notifications, suspensions, or administrative blocks were issued.
The case file arrived via electoral channels. It was the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) that forwarded the file to the AGU, after both that court and the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) received complaints about the way markets tied to the Brazilian elections are offered and promoted. Polymarket enabled betting on the October election results from abroad.
The platform has been blocked since April, along with 26 other prediction markets. But according to Jota, there are testimonies of access via VPN, the tool that masks the user's location, and in some states, simply typing the address is enough, without any intermediary tool. Added to this is a public presence that no one has blocked: the company continues to publish on its Instagram account in Portuguese about the Brazilian election and international politics, with about 224,000 followers.
Nor is the case exclusively Brazilian. In France, where the activity is also prohibited, users can still predict the outcome of this month's elections, and among those betting, Marine Le Pen is the favorite.
The Ministry of Finance reiterated its position without budging an inch. It maintains that Polymarket is blocked in Brazil, as are its associated networks, and that the fact that some users manage to access it does not mean that the company is authorized or that the measures have been lifted. The technical explanation points to the last mile: the block was ordered by the SPA and communicated to Anatel, which then has to notify more than 20,000 telecommunications providers, and since each one executes when it can, the same address is blocked at different times. Even if the page opens, they added, one cannot bet or deposit. The SPA assures that it constantly monitors whether the block is working and if anyone tries to circumvent it.
The origin of all this lies in an April resolution. The National Monetary Council (CMN) prohibited prediction markets from offering contracts tied to sports, online gambling, elections, politics, or culture, and generally to any event without an economic-financial reference. They were allowed to operate on variables such as interest rates or exchange rates. The SPA, on the same day, issued a technical note suggesting blocking those operating outside that perimeter, and Anatel ended up cutting off 27 platforms.
The official interpretation is that these markets operate with the same logic as a sportsbook but seek to evade the law. Minister Dario Durigan had previously stated it with a phrase that summarizes the government's policy: Brazil has set out in writing how fixed-odds betting should operate, and anyone who creates structures to circumvent these rules will not be tolerated.
The AGU's inquiry comes a week after the same agency began evaluating legal actions against the platform, and now the focus has shifted from political decision to administrative traceability: before suing, the State wants the complete record of what has already been attempted.
Tags: Polymarket, Attorney General's Office of the Union, prediction markets, National Monetary Council