Brazil: CPI das Bets Rejects Final Report
Brazil.- June 13, 2025 www.zonadeazar.com On Thursday (12), members of the CPI das Bets rejected the final report by Soraya Thronicke (Podemos-MS). There were four votes against and three in favour of the text. With this, the collegiate body has ended its activities without any measures to be adopted.
This was the first time in the last ten years that a Senate CPI report has been rejected.
The document accused 16 people of committing crimes (indictment), including digital influencers such as Virgínia Fonseca and Deolane Bezerra. The text also presented 20 bills to curb the harm caused by online betting.
Among them were bills to ban games similar to slot machines (such as the so-called Jogo do Tigrinho, which would not affect real-time sports betting) and to prohibit people registered in CadÚnico (an instrument that identifies low-income families) from betting on the internet.
After the meeting, Soraya stated that, despite the rejection, she will deliver the documents to the authorities in her capacity as senator. She stated that if the report had been approved by the CPI, there would not have been a ‘force majeure’ in the requests for indictments. Indictments approved by CPIs are sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office or the Federal Police, which may or may not comply with the procedure.
— We have a lot to help with. I leave happy, with a sense of mission accomplished. It will not end in pizza, I am not a pizza maker. I will schedule it for next week or, if I can, deliver it today to some of them. We will visit Andrei Rodrigues, director-general of the Federal Police, Paulo Gonet, who is the attorney general of the Republic, and Minister Luís Roberto Barroso, president of the Supreme Federal Court. In addition, to the Minister of Justice and Public Security [Ricardo Lewandowski], the National Secretary for Consumer Affairs [Wadih Damous] and I will deliver it to the President of the Republic [Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva],‘ she told TV Senado.
According to Soraya, in her report, the ’great emphasis is not on the indictments,” but on the legislative proposals.
Criticism
Senator Angelo Coronel (PSD-BA) questioned the grounds for the proposed indictments. According to him, there was little time available for reading since the report was presented on Tuesday (10), when he requested more time for analysis.
— Analysing it in 24 hours is pretending to have analysed it. They are saying that people have been indicted; I don’t know who they are, I can’t say if I agree. When you bring someone to the CPI, you condemn them, they become a criminal. There are businesspeople who will bring foreign currency into the country, but because of “compliance” [rules of good business practice], they will end up losing their business because they are in the CPI. I don’t feel comfortable voting on something I haven’t read,” said the senator, who voted to reject the bill.
Colonel, rapporteur of the bill that led to the Bets Law, with rules for the betting sector, said that legalising gambling allows greater control by the government over online betting and higher tax revenues.
Indictments
Most of the requests for indictment in the report are for businesspeople and companies in the betting sector, such as MarjoSports and Brax Produção e Publicidade. The report also requested the indictment of:
- Virgínia Fonseca, for fraud and misleading advertising;
- Deolane Bezerra, who was arrested by the Pernambuco State Court for fraud, unauthorised exploitation of games of chance, money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation (along with her partners in the betting company Zeroum Bet);
- Adélia de Jesus Soares, Deolane’s lawyer and owner of Payflow Processadora de Pagamentos, which operates in the betting sector;
- Daniel Pardim Tavares Lima, for perjury before the CPI, money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation;
- Pâmela de Souza Drudi, digital influencer, misleading advertising and fraud;
- Fernando Oliveira Lima, known as Fernandinho OIG, owner of a betting company, and two people linked to him, for the crimes of money laundering and criminal association;
Soraya claims that digital influencers commit fraud by ‘simulating high bets when, in fact, they use fake accounts, subsidised by the platforms themselves, with the intention of inducing followers to gamble with false promises of easy winnings’. These are known as demo accounts.
Alternative report
Senator Izalci Lucas (PL-DF) also presented an alternative report on Tuesday (10), which Soraya considered the result of ‘joint work’. Among other points, Izalci proposed requiring companies to bid for licences to operate virtual gambling games, banning advertising between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. on radio and television, and indicting influencer Luiz Ricardo Melquiades, known as Rico Melquiades.
Initially, the text was included as a separate vote, but Soraya added an excerpt to the final report, which, according to Coronel, resulted in a document of about 3,000 pages. In the vote, however, parliamentarians analysed only Soraya’s text and did not vote on Izalci’s, which was considered prejudiced.
Confidentiality
Senator Eduardo Gomes (PL-TO), who also voted to reject the text, criticised the disclosure in Izalci’s report of confidential data relating to the finances of those under investigation. The document is currently under seal in the commission and, according to Izalci, an excerpt requesting further investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office into singer Gusttavo Lima will be removed.
For Eduardo, the CPI was right to demonstrate weaknesses in the supervision of payment institutions operating in the sector, but committed investigative excesses. He defended the restructuring of the way CPIs work in the National Congress.
“Generally, “pyrotechnics”, direct attacks on the honour of others, and inconsistencies in the allegations have been responded to by the voters themselves as the detection of a “circus” that borders on demagoguery. I don’t like CPIs. I think the CPI works wrong. There needs to be an effective change in the way it works, or we will have one CPI after another, undermined by its own functioning.
Work
With a total of 21 meetings, the CPI heard 19 people. This represents just over 10% of the total number of approved testimonies. In addition, on several occasions, members of the collegiate body were surprised by the absence of those summoned: six people did not appear to testify.
The commission also analysed 192 requests for confidential information from the Financial Activities Control Council (Coaf), half of which were approved. In response to the requests, Coaf sent 63 documents to the commission by the beginning of June.
Senator Eduardo Girão (Novo-CE) said the report contained ‘interesting measures’ to curb the betting market and voted in favour. Initially, he said he might vote against it in protest at the conduct of the CPI’s investigations. The senator accused the commission of ‘omissions in the face of illegal conduct,’ which he called for an investigation.
“None of my eight requests were analysed. In December 2024, Veja magazine brought to light serious allegations. A well-known lobbyist in Brasília was allegedly extorting businessmen in the betting sector using the CPI as a tool of pressure.
The president of the CPI, Senator Dr Hiran, criticised Girão’s stance and defended his work at the head of the committee.
‘I do not accept insinuations. Name names. These are just bravado. We cannot be vague; when we are vague, we attack people who do not deserve to be attacked.’
Rejected proposals
Soraya considered the legislative proposals to be an ‘addendum’ to the regulations issued by the Executive Branch, which have been in full force since January, after a six-month transition period in 2024 for betting companies to comply. Here are the main measures proposed by the rapporteur:
Source: Senate Agency
Edited by @pererarte www.zonadeazar.com