Brazil's Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) has ordered antitrust regulator (CADE) to terminate its cooperation agreement with the National Association for Legal Certainty in Gaming and Betting (Anseja).
Anseja is an industry group tied to the betting sector and CADE has 30 days to terminate the partnership. The unanimous ruling also referred the case to other federal bodies for investigation.
The TCU flagged the speed at which the partnership was formed: Anseja was created on October 1, 2025, made first contact with CADE's presidency five days later, saw a new internal selection committee designated the following day, and had a five-year cooperation agreement published in the Federal Gazette by October 13.
The court's sharpest criticism centered on Anseja's role at a Cade institutional event, where association members remained on the program as speakers and took an active role running the seminar even after a formal sponsorship was cancelled.
One of Anseja's directors, ironically a former CADE employee, reportedly presented herself as the event's "main organizer."
Minister Benjamin Zymler, who authored the ruling, wrote that Anseja's role amounted to "a genuine private appropriation of a public institutional activity," warning of the risk of private interests capturing a public agency's agenda in a heavily regulated sector like betting.
The TCU also cited transparency failures, noting Anseja never disclosed its full membership list, making it impossible to identify the economic interests behind its partnership with CADE.
The case reached the court through a complaint questioning the partnership's legitimacy and the closeness between association leaders and CADE officials, along with an anonymous allegation, not confirmed by the TCU, about possible ties between Anseja's president and payment companies and illegal betting platforms.
The court forwarded that material to federal prosecutors, the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry's Secretariat of Prizes and Bets for further review
