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Lawyer Regis Dudena has been officially appointed as the secretary of Brazil's Prizes and Bets Secretariat (SPA) to lead the government department responsible for introducing sports betting and online gambling regulations.
The appointment of a secretary for the new agency was a long time coming, with former special advisor to the Ministry of Finance, José Francisco Manssur, who helped draft 2023's sports-betting legislation, originally assumed to be the first head of the regulator until Manssur was passed over for the position for political reasons in February.
In the two-plus months since, the Prizes and Bets Secretariat within the Ministry of Finance has struggled to fulfil the expectations of a swift implementation that Manssur had set, including through the promise of issuing up to a dozen implementing ordinances that would regulate the market.
Eventually, undersecretary Simone Vicentini began signing ordinances left in the draft box and publishing them in advance of a secretary being appointed to lead Brazil's first gambling regulator.
That work preceding Dudena's appointment included an ordinance that authorised certification labs, one that laid out the groundwork for payments and another which laid out the schedule for 11 coming ordinances over the next four months.
Now that Dudena has finally taken office, he will have a full schedule fulfilling that regulatory mandate.
His appointment should quickly trigger the publication of a key ordinance to establish and open a licensing process for operators of online betting and gaming.
That licensing ordinance should even be published before the end of April, according to the government's timeline.
The month of May should see further regulations to address anti-money laundering and the rights and responsibilities of operators.
In June, the secretariat is expected to roll out ordinances for the oversight of fixed-odds betting, the procedures for administrative sanctions and technical requirements for online casino games.
In July, the Secretariat will address responsible gambling and protocols for transferring tax revenue to the established social beneficiaries.
Dudena, for his part, is not a stranger to working in the highest echelons of the Brazilian government, although he has never held a position related to gambling before.
He is already acting as the number two at the Ministry of Finance to executive secretary Dario Durigan. He formerly held several positions in the Casa Civil, Brazil's equivalent of the White House, during the tenure of former President Dilma Rousseff.
According to a well-placed source, “public servants seem to be optimistic” about his appointment.
In a statement, Brazilian gambling industry association ANJL said Dudena's appointment “adds to the efforts to regulate the sector being undertaken by the competent technical team within the SPA”.
