Singer's case highlights rising crisis in online gambling

In less than 24 hours, Gusttavo Lima, one of the most famous Brazilian country singers, sang at a rodeo in rural São Paulo state, watched Akon perform at the Rock in Rio festival, jetted to Miami - and became the target of an arrest warrant on suspicion of money laundering.

- Tiago Rogero

A judge issued the warrant last Monday, saying Lima was suspected of links to illegal online gambling.

A spokesperson for the singer, whose real name is Nivaldo Batista Lima, described the warrant as "unjust and without legal grounds", adding that "the artist's innocence will be duly proven", and the arrest order was overturned a day later.

But the attempt to arrest a star with 13 million monthly listeners on Spotify dominated local news headlines - and cast a spotlight on how a sudden boom in unregulated online gambling has become a growing criminal headache and public health crisis for Brazil.

Online gambling companies have grown exponentially since the Covid pandemic, many of them with links to international companies and local criminal groups.

New rules to regulate online gambling will come into force on 1 January, but experts warn that the regulations will be insufficient to combat what many are calling Brazil's "epidemic" of online gambling addiction.

A series of recent studies have laid bare the scale of the problem: in addition to getting into debt, more Brazilians are using money they would have spent on entertainment or even food to bet online, and growing numbers are dropping out of applying to university for the same reason.