Brazil’s Ministry of Sports sets protocol to freeze lottery funding for non-compliant sports entities

New rules published in Brazil’s Official Gazette require CAIXA to suspend lottery and fixed-odds betting transfers when the Ministry flags an entity that fails legal certification and governance requirements.

Brazil’s Ministry of Sports has put a new control protocol into force to prevent federal lottery and fixed-odds betting proceeds from reaching sports organisations that fail to meet legal and governance requirements. The measure was formalised via Ordinance (Portaria) MESP No. 6, dated 11 February 2026 and published on 12 February 2026 in the Official Gazette (DOU).

The ordinance standardises a mandatory communication flow between the Ministry’s Certification Directorate and CAIXA, the state bank that operates federal lottery transfers. When the Ministry concludes—through an administrative procedure—that a recipient entity’s General Sports Certification is absent, denied, or cancelled, it must notify CAIXA within five business days and request suspension while the irregularity persists.

The notice to CAIXA must include key compliance identifiers (including the entity’s corporate details and CNPJ), a description of the certification status, the administrative case reference, and the legal basis for the suspension request. Once CAIXA receives the official communication, it must suspend the transfer, and the Ministry can request confirmation of implementation within 48 hours. The suspension remains active until the Ministry formally confirms that the organisation has regularised its status and certification.

In its own explanation of the change, the Ministry stresses the ordinance does not create new eligibility rules—it operationalises requirements that already exist in law (fiscal regularity, governance standards, administrative transparency and accountability) by tightening traceability, deadlines and documentation in the CAIXA workflow.

For sports stakeholders, the practical impact is that lottery-derived funding becomes even more directly linked to certification and governance compliance: once a certification issue is recorded, transfers can be paused quickly—and only restarted after a formal clearance, not informal assurances.