🎲 The betting lobby in Brasília

In April last year, Brazil’s House Speaker Hugo Motta, Senator Ciro Nogueira and other politicians flew on a Gulfstream jet to the São Paulo city of São Roque, returning from the Caribbean tax haven of Sint Maarten. The aircraft belonged to Fernando “Fernandin OIG” Oliveira Lima, the online betting mogul behind platforms that operate the notorious Fortune Tiger slots game, which has become shorthand for the country’s gambling boom.

The flight became public knowledge after the Federal Police flagged irregularities regarding luggage protocols, reporting that five bags were waved through without an X-ray scan, after the jet’s pilot stepped around the screening gantry to retrieve them.

The authorities have stopped short of claims that the bags belonged to any of the politicians on board, but this aside, the flight served as a worrying illustration of the extent of the betting lobby in Brazil’s Congress — Nogueira issued a firm defense of Fernandin during the Senate’s 2025 inquiry into betting companies, while Motta was behind a controversial legislative amendment in 2021 that significantly lowered the tax burden on fixed-odds betting.

Above all else, the Sint Maarten flight shows that the line between lawmakers and the booming gambling industry they regulate has effectively dissolved…

Don’t miss out! Upgrade to unlock full access. The process takes only seconds with Apple Pay or Stripe. Become a member.

We’re here for readers who want to truly understand Brazil and Latin America — a region too often ignored or misrepresented by the international media.

Since 2017, our reporting has been powered by paid subscribers. They’re the reason we can keep a full-time team of journalists across Brazil and Argentina, delivering sharp, independent coverage every day.

If you value our work, subscribing is the best way to keep it going — and growing.