Mexico's Rewrite of the 1947 Gambling Law Is Ready for the Security Cabinet

Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez told the president's morning conference that a reform of the Federal Gaming and Raffles Law, unchanged in substance for nearly eight decades, has cleared internal review and goes next to the security cabinet. Its purpose is money laundering and tax fraud in casinos and betting shops, about 20 of which are under investigation.

• Rodríguez said on 3 September that the Interior Ministry, Segob, has a reform of the Ley Federal de Juegos y Sorteos ready after two years of work across federal agencies, on President Claudia Sheinbaum's instruction, according to Infobae's report of the conference
• The proposal must be approved by the security cabinet before it enters the legislative process; "let's see if the law passes the security cabinet, they approve us and then onward," she said
• She said the Attorney-General's office and the Financial Intelligence Unit are investigating around 20 casinos, including 13 whose accounts were blocked in November 2025, for suspected laundering and tax fraud
• The Finance Ministry separately published new anti-laundering rules for vulnerable activities, including licensed gaming, in the Official Gazette on 10 August, with a compliance deadline of 30 November
• Segob's gaming directorate suspended ten online casino domains in July; iGaming Times reported the 13-casino closures and the government's earlier admission that the 1947 law is obsolete

A Law Older Than Every Casino It Governs

Mexico's Interior Ministry has finished a reform of the federal gaming law and is preparing to put it to the security cabinet, Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez said at President Claudia Sheinbaum's morning press conference on 3 September, as reported by Infobae. The Ley Federal de Juegos y Sorteos has been in force since 1947 and has had no substantive amendment since. The reform, Rodríguez said, targets money laundering and tax fraud in casinos and betting centres.

The proposal is the result of two years' work between Segob and the other federal agencies with a role in the sector, on the president's direct instruction, and the industry itself had asked for the update. Its internal review is complete. "Let's see if the law passes the security cabinet, they approve us and then onward," Rodríguez said, in the report's account.

She was frank about the state of the sector. Segob's administrative relationship with permit holders is stable, she said, but there are problems that belong to the prosecutors and the Financial Intelligence Unit rather than to her ministry: "It has to do with what you know, which is public, 13 casinos and some others, there must be about 20." Those cases involve the Attorney-General's office and the Finance Ministry's intelligence unit over suspected laundering and tax fraud. The unit detected high-risk operations at 13 casinos in November 2025, with cash movements, international flows and unsupervised digital platforms, and blocked accounts of several companies, as iGaming Times reported at the time.

The Minister Described Her Own Terms to the Industry

Rodríguez recounted a meeting at the start of the administration with the permit holders of the country's two big licensed industries, casinos and betting centres. Her first request, she said, was that they not corrupt Segob staff: "I am going to close your businesses and put the colleagues who are receiving money from you in jail." She told them the ministry would have no representatives or intermediaries and that anything to be dealt with should come directly to her. In return she offered to regularise pending amparo proceedings and other paperwork, and said the arrangement has held. She has also instructed operators and inspectors to film every verification visit on their phones, so that "both will have the evidence of any issue".

The reform sits on top of measures already taken. The Finance Ministry published new general rules under the anti-laundering law for vulnerable activities in the Official Gazette on 10 August, introducing a risk-based approach that requires licensed gaming operators to identify, assess, classify and document risks by customer, transaction and geography, with strengthened know-your-customer, beneficial-ownership and politically-exposed-person checks, and a general compliance deadline of 30 November 2026. Segob's gaming directorate suspended ten online casino domains in July in investigations that included suspected laundering and terrorism financing. Between January and May the sector filed 202,045 reports of betting activity with the intelligence unit covering at least 15.3 billion pesos, about $800 million, according to Infobae. Mexico's regulatory profile is on the iGaming Times country page.

Routing a Gambling Law Through the Security Cabinet Says What Kind of Law It Is

A market-opening reform would go through the economy ministry and the tax authority. This one goes to the body that coordinates the armed forces, the Guard and the prosecutors, and its stated purpose is laundering. That tells operators the licensing regime that follows will be built around financial intelligence rather than around channelisation or consumer protection, and that the permit holders under investigation are the reason. The industry asked for an updated law; it may not have expected this one.

Two Sets of Rules in Four Months Is the Compliance Cost of Being Trusted

The August anti-laundering rules and the coming statute will hit the same operators twice, once with a November deadline and once with whatever the new law requires. For the large, listed and foreign-owned operators, which already run risk-based compliance, the cost is manageable and the benefit is a cleaner market. For the smaller permit holders whose accounts have been blocked, the combination is designed to be fatal.

The Bill Still Has to Survive Congress, Where the 50% Tax Idea Went Quiet

The government has floated punitive tax rates before and not enacted them, and a security-cabinet approval is not a vote. What is different now is that the minister has attached her personal credibility and a set of arrests-in-waiting to the reform. A law that has waited since 1947 has rarely had a sponsor with that much reason to see it through.

Mexico is treating its casino industry as a security matter first and a market second. The operators who survive the investigations will get the new law; the others are its justification.