Brazil court blocks Stake again days after reprieve
TRF-3 president suspends injunction that let Stake keep trading, siding with the Attorney General's Office over fairness to rival operators.
Stake's brief return to the Brazilian market has already ended. Judge Luis Antonio Johonsom di Salvo, president of the Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region (TRF-3), suspended on Friday the order that had permitted the operator to keep working until 25 October.
The move came at the request of Brazil's Attorney General's Office (AGU) and reverses a preliminary injunction issued only the previous Thursday by Federal Judge Cristiane Farias Rodrigues dos Santos. Stake is once again barred from operating in the country as a result.
The AGU had argued that the earlier injunction handed Stake an unfair edge over competitors by letting it trade while other licensed firms remained subject to the restrictions in force. Judge Johonsom di Salvo accepted that reasoning, warning that allowing the exemption to stand risked encouraging other operators to pursue similar relief and would distort the uniform application of the rules.
"In this case, I consider the evidence of serious harm to administrative public order to be sufficiently established," the ruling stated, according to iGaming Business.
Stake had opposed the AGU's request before the TRF-3, but the court did not accept its position.
Thursday's injunction had, in any case, only partially favoured the company. The 9th Federal Civil Court of São Paulo had rejected Stake's separate bid to keep operating until 31 December 2029, the expiry date of its original licence.
The new suspension remains in force until the underlying case is resolved or the court's presidency issues a further decision. It removes the 16 days of extra trading Stake had briefly secured.
Stake did not respond to a request for comment from iGaming Business.
The ruling clears the way for federal agencies to apply the blocking and restriction measures set out in the provisional measure President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced late last month.
In his reasoning, Judge Johonsom di Salvo pointed to the risk of regulatory asymmetry from maintaining Stake's authorisation and cited the need to protect bettors given what he described as a lack of transparency in how online gambling products operate.
The decision does not rule on the substance of the dispute, nor does it address the constitutionality of the provisional measure itself, which two of Brazil's major gambling trade associations have separately challenged before the Supreme Federal Court.