"What we also want, through what we are doing in Brazil, is to take legal services and bring people from Macau to Brazil," so as to make "the bridge between China and Portuguese-speaking countries," he explained.
The lawyer said that Brazil "has enormous potential" as projections for the gaming market in the South American country point to gross revenues running at 6.5 billion dollars.
Despite this 'huge potential', the lawyer mentioned some difficulties related to security and the fact that Brazil is made up of states with different legislations.
According to the lawyer, one of the main gambling operators in Macau, the US group Las Vegas Sands, "has been in talks with the governor of Rio de Janeiro for a long time" and there is also the possibility of other small operators entering Brazil, he pointed out.
Pedro Cortés also stressed that he sees a lot of willingness on the part of the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, to legalize the gaming market, because he already realized "that gaming already exists and it is better to have the operation legalized, than an illegal market", in order to guarantee considerable revenue through taxes.
These statements come a day after another Portuguese lawyer, from the same office, made a presence in Brasilia at a hearing on the Brazilian Senate Sport Commission, in which he explained the reality of regulated markets in Macau and Portugal.
"Brazil has a population with a certain propensity to play, it likes betting, and it is a country of continental dimension, which lives a very own reality. Portugal and Macao are two regulated markets and Brazil can look at these two countries and realize whether these practices are good or not, given their reality," Óscar Madureira, who has worked with the gaming industry for 15 years, told Lusa.
"If Brazil wants to become attractive and receive this foreign direct investment, which has an effective impact on the populations, and we are talking about billions of investments in US dollars and the creation of thousands of jobs, it should turn this product attractive. In this context we spoke about Portugal, about the online reality, how the activity could generate much more profit for the State, and does not generate it because it is excessively tax punitive," concluded the lawyer.
On April 26, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said that it should be the legislative power, the Congress, to rule on the exploitation of gambling banned in the country since 1941.
Source: GMB / LUSA
