Check out the interview transcript below
Eduardo Moreira: ‘Bets’ have become a very tragic epidemic in Brazil. We have almost 10 million people showing signs of addiction. And — to me this is the worst figure — 60% of the people who gamble are up to 39 years old. They’re young people, and many of them are delaying their education. After we legalized and regulated the betting market, this activity kept growing at an absurdly high rate. There’s an important point here: a study by the University of California San Diego — where I happened to study — analyzed the U.S. after online betting was legalized. The average ticket, the average amount bet per person, increased by almost 400%, because people felt they had a kind of stamp of approval that it was something legal to do, both from a legal perspective and from the point of view that it was socially acceptable.
So the question is: we have two types of betting in Brazil — sports betting, which makes up around 20%, the online ones we see the most; but the online casino games are a complete scam, where we don’t even know how the system is set up. You keep losing at the roulette, and you’ll never be able to verify it, and that’s money flowing out of the country. Wouldn’t it be worth banning these online casinos that we have zero control over, where it’s just a way to lose money — and instead heavily regulate sports betting, like we do with cigarettes?
What bothers me when the only proposal is to increase taxes is that, first, we risk becoming dependent on betting revenue, just like people say that football has become dependent on ‘Bets’. And second, if the government collects R$12 billion, but poor people lost R$30 billion last year, it’s almost as if we’re collecting taxes on the backs of poor people’s losses. And these guys can buy everyone — ads everywhere, sponsorships, editorials. So the question is: how are we going to fight this? Because this is a huge problem, even for our economy.
Fernando Haddad: Eduardo, you’re absolutely right in everything you’re saying. Everything. I took over the Ministry of Finance with an established epidemic already in place. And worse: they went four years without regulating advertising, four years without charging taxes on ‘Bets’ — more than four years and R$40 billion in subsidies, all of which went abroad — to buy crypto, buy dollars, fintechs — they sent everything abroad.
This money vanished from Brazil. Faced with this chaos, we said: let’s put this into an integrated information system so I can know what's going on. I had no idea what was happening. Today I know, and it’s a disaster. What’s happening is a disaster.
What are we going to do now? After six months, with the State finally having access to the data, we’ll bring this information to the president and treat it as a serious public health issue. A serious issue! So we’ll first need to address the advertising. You know that alcohol and cigarettes have extremely strict advertising rules.
Not long ago, Formula 1 had them — but that’s over! Another thing: this issue of gambling and sports betting — should we differentiate or not? Another point: fintechs that are being used as vehicles for illegal betting...
And often laundering money. Betting plus fintech equals money laundering.
Exactly. We’re already informing the Central Bank about the fintechs that are possibly being used as vehicles for organized crime, money laundering, or worse. So there are many things to address.
We’re going to bring the Federal Police into this discussion because it’s not just the Finance Ministry’s responsibility — there’s crime involved here. I think that now we have a complete picture to show the country. We can lay it out and say: look at the size of the problem we’ve created. You know this started at the end of the Temer government, it went four years without anyone doing anything about it, with tons of money being made.
And you’re right in saying that it’s people up to 40 years old who are gambling the most. So we’ll have to face this.
It’s that old story: I’ve never asked you for anything — have I ever asked you for anything until today? Take good care of this betting issue because it’s really hurting people. Families are suffering. I’ve seen things that are unspeakable, as they say.
I’ve heard of horrifying cases involving bets, people I know who even lost family members because of it. It’s a real tragedy. If you asked me...
In an ideal world...
In an ideal world, for me this should be...
Banned.
The thing is, technically it’s very difficult to block...
No, but it’s possible because...
If a project came up in the Federal Chamber to continue or to stop, I’d press the stop button. There’s no amount of tax revenue that justifies this mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. What’s happening is really bad.
Source: GMB
