Wire SOUTH AMERICA
Paraguay - Failure to implement taxes Several Paraguayan media outlets have repeated the findings of an investigation carried out by the 30+ current affairs programme in which they claimed that Decree No. 1,860/19, signed by President Mario Abdo Benítez and the former Minister of Finance, Benigno López, had “disappeared.” The decree would have imposed a new tax on gambling.
The decree, which entered into force on May 31, 2019, established a tax withholding on the profits generated by gambling throughout the country, but according to local press reports it does not appear in any of the official records of the Presidency of the Republic.
“The program 30+, broadcast by channel Trece, revealed a situation that, in addition to generating suspicion, could be considered irregular and has to do with the disappearance of a decree signed by the President of the Republic, Mario Abdo Benítez, and the then Minister of Finance, Benigno López,” La Nación reported.
According to a review of the Presidential Gazette, Decree 1859 skips directly to 1861. Javier Balbuena, former head of the National Gaming Commission told local radio programme 650 AM, that if an error had been spotted the appropriate thing would have been to issue a new decree that annulled the previous one rather than proceeding to erase and disregard the regulations.
“In a serious country, where legal certainty and the rule of law prevail, another decree would come out,” he said. The person in charge of deleting this decree from the system could not be any official, Balbuena stated, since there is a process that must be followed to upload or delete a document from the internet.
“Someone managed this decree, someone made the president sign it and someone erased it. I imagine that it wouldn’t be any official because you have to have a username, password and the authorisation of the web manager to be able to delete it” he said.
Brazil - Online payment blocking proposed A bill that would that would ban online payments to unauthorized betting and lottery sites based abroad is under review in the chamber of deputies. Deputy Pastor Gil (Gildenemir de Lima Sousa) presented bill PL1823/2022 in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies in July.
Under the proposal, Brazil’s central bank would have to establish rules to determine the cancellation of such transactions, and prohibit transfers between buyers and suppliers.
Specifically, Bill 1,823/22 prohibits financial entities that issue credit or debit cards, as well as any other payment entity, from authorizing Internet transactions in order to allow for the participation in unauthorized games of chance and lotteries, as well as access to child pornography.
P12 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS
Operators Label Sports Tenders Unfair
Gaming business associations in Paraguay have criticized the National Gaming Commission (Conajzar) over the new sports betting tender.
Operators in Paraguay argue that the new sports betting tender is unfair and will lead to a monopoly in the sector.
PARAGUAY LEGISLATION
Gaming business associations in Paraguay have criticized the National Gaming Commission (Conajzar) over the new sports betting tender arguing that it is unfair and will lead to a monopoly in the sector.
Conajzar has opened the call for Public Tender No. 01/2022, which will grant a license for sports betting. Potential operators will need to pay a fee of 60,000,000 guaraníes in order to take part in the bidding process which is non refundable. Only one operator will be granted a licence.
However, the president of the Paraguayan Chamber of Games of Chance Aníbal Salomón, questioned the call for tenders, the short time given for the presentation of offers, and the excessive cost to receive a copy of the Bidding Terms and Conditions.
Te call for bids he said was given at too short a notice and the cost (around $8,700) to obtain the terms and conditions were excessive as they were usually fee even for large scale infrastructure works he said.
Salomón said “a fortune must be paid to know the conditions of the bid and two because
alliances with foreign companies are needed to meet all the requirements, and 60 days is a short time to specify and present offers to Conajzar”.
Consequently this would lead to a continuation of the present monopoly enjoyed by Daruma Sam as it was the only company that “has the capacity and experience,” he said.
Meanwhile the Association of Gambling Operators (Apoja) agreed to question whether the current gambling law establishes that the running of sports betting was valid for five years and was exclusive to one company.
However Daruma Sam denied the claims that the board was acting in its favour. Local company Daruma Sam was granted the exclusive right to offer sports betting ahead of the last FIFA World Cup for five years.
Its legal representative Carlos Sacco told ABC that the exact stipulations of the Bidding Terms and Conditions was not yet known and added that there were other companies, in addition to his, that could meet the requirements to run sports betting. In addition Sacco said that the 60 day window was similar to the last bidding process held between 2017 and 2018.
Mexico Government promises ‘no more licences’
Te Government of Mexico will not increase the number of license for new casinos and will increase its control over the industry.
After offering a public apology to the relatives of the 52 fatalities in the Casino Royale fire, which occurred 11 years ago in the city of Monterrey, the Undersecretary of Human Rights of the Federal Government Mexican, Alejandro Encinas, stressed that permits for the construction of new casinos “are withheld.”
“Permissions for gambling houses are withheld, until the permits are certain and all security issues are met, it is being reviewed by the Games and Raffles Board in SEGOB (Te Mexican Interior Ministry). Te review is being done, because there have been changes with the new Secretary of the Interior, “ he said.
Te Casino Royale tragedy left 52
people dead after a group of armed men attacked and set fire to the casino in Monterrey in 2011.
Te administration of President Andres Manuel López Obrador has been in power since December 2018 having won in a landslide. Obrador has publicly come out against the granting of new casino licenses and while he has made big changes to the lottery sector he has repeatedly expressed his opposition to any expansion of the land based industry.
In September 2020, Obrador asked the Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, to carry out an investigation into whether licences had been issued unlawfully. Te President said there were question marks over some of the licences issued under President Vicente Fox’s administration many years ago saying the processes to award them had been ‘inadequate.’
Argentina
Te Argentine government has officialised a new regime for slot machines that converts automatic licenses to non- automatic licenses to exercise greater control over imports. Te new rules were made official after the Ministry of Economy, through the Secretary of Commerce, issued Resolution 1/2022 in which it stated that “a series of goods have been identified for which, based on the current economic situation, it is essential to evaluate their trade flows.” Among the products for which the import regime changes are goods identified with the code 9504.30.00, which are, “games activated with coins, bank notes, bank cards, tokens or by any other means of payment.” Te changes are part of a wider policy to control and limit import permits for other goods arriving in the country.
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