The Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA) has announced new regulations aimed at preventing beneficiaries of the Novo Desenrola Brasil program from participating in betting activities. Published in the Federal Official Gazette on Tuesday, Ordinance No. 1,237 details the prohibition alongside Regulatory Directive No. 3, which mandates that gambling operators exclude individuals enrolled in the program from registering on their platforms. If individuals already have accounts, those accounts must be suspended immediately.
Beneficiaries seeking to withdraw their account balance must do so actively; should they fail to act, operators are required to initiate refunds within two days of determining a user’s ineligibility. This ordinance modifies SPA's previous directive, No. 1,231/2024, ensuring adherence to Provisional Measure No. 1,355/2026, which similarly limits fixed-odds betting for those enrolled in the Extraordinary Family Financial Rebalancing Program.
The prohibition applies specifically to those whose loan agreements are secured by the Operations Guarantee Fund, established by Law No. 12,087 of 2009. The ordinance further extends to individuals barred from betting by administrative or judicial decisions, recipients of Bolsa Família, and those receiving the Continuous Cash Transfer Benefit.
To enforce this regulation, Regulatory Directive No. 3 requires sports betting and online gambling companies to consult the Betting Management System (Sigap) to check whether users are beneficiaries of the Novo Desenrola Brasil program. Operators must perform this check both when users create accounts and log in for the first time each day, adhering to regulations outlined in the Ineligible Persons Module Manual.
When a user’s individual taxpayer ID number is found in the Ineligible Persons Module, the system will indicate their ineligibility. If the system flags a user as ineligible, operators must suspend the user’s account within three days and notify the individual of the suspension reason, allowing them to withdraw their funds.
In cases where users do not withdraw voluntarily, operators have two days to process the refunds by transferring the funds to a registered deposit or payment account associated with the user. Operators must document all communications with users regarding these actions for a minimum of five years.
If transferring funds is problematic—due to issues with the user’s registered payment method or failure to contact the user—operators must keep accurate accounting records of the funds while attempting to reach the user. Once identified as a program beneficiary with outstanding bets, operators are obliged to cancel those bets and issue refunds. The timeframe for operators to implement these new procedures is 10 days, with an additional 15 days allowed for verifying the Sigap Ineligible Persons Module.
