Prosecutor at Brazil's Audit Court Asks It to Delay the Betting Ban to 31 December

Deputy prosecutor-general Lucas Rocha Furtado, a declared opponent of betting, has asked the Federal Court of Accounts to push the ban back by almost three months and to make the government account for the R$30 million each operator paid for a licence. The court has not ruled, and its power over a provisional measure is limited.

• Lucas Rocha Furtado, deputy prosecutor-general of the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Federal Court of Accounts (MPTCU), filed a representation on Monday 28 September asking the court to order that Brazil's betting ban take effect only on 31 December 2026
• He asks for the order as a precautionary measure without first hearing the government, with every deadline in Provisional Measure 1.394, from player withdrawals to site closures and bank refunds, moved back to fit the new date
• He also wants the government to calculate the licence fees operators paid so they can be refunded in proportion to the time left, and the Finance Ministry to produce an impact study, which it told a records request it did not have
• Furtado, who says he opposes betting and has twice asked the court to act against the sector, argues the measure shows "nítido desvio de finalidade", a clear misuse of power, because it was issued nine days before the election
• The Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) has not ruled; the representation must pass an admissibility check first, and the constitutional challenge to the ban is before the Supreme Federal Tribunal

A Prosecutor Who Opposes Betting Asks for More Time for the Operators

Furtado is a deputy prosecutor-general at the MPTCU, the prosecution service that sits within the Federal Court of Accounts (Tribunal de Contas da União, TCU). According to BNLData, which describes the document at length, he states in the text that he is against betting and recalls that he has already asked the TCU to act against the sector twice: in May 2025, over failures in the state's response to the harms of betting, and in August 2026, over the spread of illegal platforms, in case TC 017.927/2026-9. ConJur reported in August that he had also asked the court to examine what betting costs the public purse in health, social assistance and consumer protection. Even so, he concludes that the provisional measure cannot be carried out in the form it was issued. "A meu ver, há inconstitucionalidade e ilegalidade na medida" (in my view, there is unconstitutionality and illegality in the measure), he wrote, according to BNLData.

The representation was filed on Monday 28 September, according to BNLData and Estadão Conteúdo, three days after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed Provisional Measure 1.394. Under the government's timetable, players can withdraw their balances until 23:59 on 5 October, sites go offline on 6 October and bank refunds follow, running to 14 October according to BNLData. Every licence is extinguished 30 days after publication, and the measure rules out any refund of the R$30 million (approximately $5.8 million) licence fee. BNLData, citing O Globo, puts the total paid for 85 licences at R$2.55 billion (approximately $493 million).

What the MPTCU Is Asking For

According to BNLData's account of the document, the representation makes five requests: a precautionary order, without first hearing the Union, moving the ban and all its operational deadlines to 31 December 2026; a calculation by the Union of the licence fees each company paid, with a view to refunds in proportion to the unused period; TCU monitoring of the extinction of the licences; a regulatory, economic and social impact report from the Finance Ministry covering lost tax revenue, jobs and sports sponsorship; and notice to Congress of the measure's "caráter eleitoreiro" (electioneering character) and the need for a proper transition. Estadão Conteúdo and SBT News report the same core requests. Furtado calls the 6 October deadline "exíguo e draconiano" (insufficient and draconian), according to iGaming Brazil and SBT News.

The Legal Grounds: Urgency, Acquired Rights and Unjust Enrichment

Furtado's argument rests on four points, as BNLData reports them. First, the urgency and relevance that Article 62 of the Constitution requires for a provisional measure must be judged on technical grounds, not electoral ones; issuing the measure nine days before the first round, alongside Lula's comparison of betting to a cancer, shows in his view "nítido desvio de finalidade". Second, companies licensed under Law 14.790 of 2023 that paid their fees and built their operations have a legitimate expectation of regulatory stability, protected by Article 5, XXXVI of the Constitution on perfected legal acts and acquired rights. Third, extinguishing the licences without a proportional refund would amount to unjust enrichment of the Union, which Article 884 of the Civil Code forbids. "O Estado não pode se beneficiar economicamente da extinção unilateral de contratos que ele próprio celebrou" (the State cannot benefit economically from the unilateral termination of contracts it entered into itself), he writes. Fourth, the measure breaches Article 21 of the Law of Introduction to the Norms of Brazilian Law (LINDB), which requires the administration to weigh the practical consequences of its decisions, because it ignores the effect on jobs, club sponsorships and suppliers. He also cites the president of Flamengo saying the State cannot change the rules in the middle of the game, an argument Furtado, a Vasco supporter, says left him "inteiramente convencido" (entirely convinced).

The Refund Request Is the Part the TCU Can Actually Deliver

The TCU is not a court of law. Article 71 of the Constitution makes it the body that assists Congress in external control of the federal administration: it audits the executive, can set a deadline for a body to correct an illegality and, if that is ignored, can suspend the administrative act concerned and report to Congress. A provisional measure, however, has the force of law, and the Supreme Federal Tribunal held in 2021, in MS 35.410, that the TCU cannot declare a federal law unconstitutional with general effect. Postponing the ban across the whole market is therefore the request least likely to succeed, and the one most squarely in the STF's hands, where the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) has already filed ADI 8027. The accounting of R$2.55 billion in licence fees, an impact report from the Finance Ministry and a TCU watch over how the SPA extinguishes the licences are different matters: they concern how the executive handles public money and administrative acts, which is exactly the TCU's remit. If the court grants only those, the operators gain no time, but they gain an official calculation that would strengthen any later damages claim.

An Anti-Betting Prosecutor Makes a Harder Argument to Dismiss

The government can present the ANJL's lawsuit as an industry defending its revenue. It is harder to say the same of a prosecutor who opens his filing by stating his opposition to betting and who spent August asking the TCU to investigate the damage it causes. Furtado's case is not that the ban is wrong but that the method is: an abrupt timetable, no study of the consequences and no refund for fees the state collected less than two years ago. That lines up with the Finance Ministry's reply to a records request, on 24 September, that it held no impact study, and gives Congress, which must approve the measure within 120 days, a case for a transition period that does not come from the operators. The electioneering charge is the weakest element legally, because motive is hard to prove against a measure the government has justified with health and debt figures, but it is the one most likely to be repeated in Congress.

The TCU is unlikely to keep betting sites online past 6 October. It may yet force the government to put a number on what it has kept, and that number will matter in every court that hears the operators' claims.