Report LATIN AMERICA REPORT - BRAZIL
FACTS AND FIGURES
l Brazil once tried to sell an aircraft carrier on ebay. l
Rio de Janerio was once the capital of Portugal (1763), making it the only European capital outside of Europe.
l The biggest Japanese community outside of Japan is in Brazil. l
l
Rio de Janerio means January River, and it was called so by mistake. A Portugues explorer thought the bay was the mouth of a river.
The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janerio will be the first time a South American country has had the right to host them.
l
There’s an underground river 4km beneath the Amazon river that is as long as the Amazon, but is hundreds of times wider.
The Zico law was amended in 1998 by Edson Arantes do
Nascimento, Pele. Under the “Pele Law,” in order to raise additional income for sports, bingo halls would be permitted
populous country in Latin America and offers a potentially huge market for the gaming industry. Brazilians love to gamble especially on lotteries and Brazil boasts one of the most advanced and most popular lotteries in the world. Brazilians are also gambling in increasing numbers online. Today it is estimated that about 8.7 million Brazilians play some form of online gambling.
With online gaming on the rise and the Brazilian economy currently in a recession this is a crucial time for the industry with lawmakers increasingly aware of the need to legislate on gambling so that they may reap the tax benefits of a regulated industry. Even before the current crisis reached its peak a number of proposals had been put forward in the National Congress which were already seeking to liberalise the land based casino market and legalise the infamous animal game.
Combined with the present crisis this has added to the impetus for change. In fact the legalisation of the animal game as well as other proposals put forward in the Senate are leading to one of the most important and open debates on the industry in several years.
to house slot machine parlors as annexes to their property.
BINGO AND SLOT MACHINES The Zico law in 1993 legalised bingo. Zico was the
nickname of soccer player, Arthur Antunes Coimbra, who served as Minister of Sports in the early 1990’s. Under the Zico Law, bingo halls were permitted in order to raise tax income for ailing sports clubs. This law was amended in 1998 by Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pele who also served as Minister for Sports. Under the “Pele Law,” in order to raise additional income for sports, bingo halls would be permitted to house slot machine parlors as annexes to their property.
In addition thanks to the somewhat ambiguous wording of the law an array of electronic devices were covered in the new act, and bingo halls resembled casinos without card tables and roulette. Meanwhile the governments of Rio de Janeiro, Paraná and Mato Grosso continued to pass their own bingo laws which complicated the matter further and the Maguito Law, which would have enforced a ban on all bingo parlours, failed after operators appealed to local courts.
Bingo halls began to spread quickly and by 2003 there were over 1,000 bingo halls dotted around Brazil many of which were large scale. By 2004, Brazil had around 100,000 video gaming machines that could be found in thousands of bingo halls throughout the country. In 2004, President Lula da Silva and his party created a commission to look into more fully regulating the sector. Under new proposals, tax income made from the industry would have been designated to combat poverty. There was also evidence to suggest that the government was also paving the way for other types of gambling.
But just as the government was considering new legislation, Brazil was hit by one of the largest political scandals in its history. In 2004 proof of corruption in the bingo industry came in the form of an undercover video. Filmed two years earlier it showed the then head of the State Lottery of Rio de Janeiro, Waldomiro Diniz, soliciting a bribe from well known illegal gambling boss and numbers runner, Carlos Ramos.
This led to a number of other revelations which showed that criminals, who had made their fortunes running numbers, had not only become involved in the bingo industry, but they were also found to be bribing members of the Worker’s Party (da Silva’s party) and other high ranking government officials in return for stays of closure and influence.
Consequently, the government was forced to take urgent action. Every single bingo hall was closed by President Lula da Silva under Provisional Measure 168/04. Bingo workers took to the streets in protest all over the country and two and a half months
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