Betting probe puts Flavio Bolsonaro under Supreme Court scrutiny

• Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court receives a second police investigation involving Flávio Bolsonaro.
• The case grew from a Federal Police inquiry into money laundering through online betting platforms.
• Bolsonaro and lawyer Willer Tomaz deny wrongdoing ahead of the October 25 runoff.

Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) has received a new Federal Police (PF) investigation into presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro over alleged money laundering involving lawyer Willer Tomaz.

The case, assigned by lottery to Justice Alexandre de Moraes, began as a police inquiry into online betting platforms.

Clues in the cloud

The PF in Rio Grande do Sul opened the original inquiry to examine whether online betting platforms were being used for money laundering and foreign-exchange evasion. The trail then led investigators to sports betting operations in Rio de Janeiro, Valor International reported.

On October 10, days after the first round of voting, a Rio Grande do Sul court authorized access to Tomaz’s confidential data. Material stored in his cellphone cloud account became the backbone of the police report.

That report points to Tomaz as the de facto controller or owner of Rede Loto, a betting company. Because Bolsonaro sits in the Senate, his jurisdictional privileges sent the file to the STF.

The case reached the court at least a week before Valor’s October 19 report, with Estadão first publishing its contents. It is the second investigation involving the Liberal Party candidate now before the STF.

The master key

Emails uncovered by investigators list Bolsonaro as master user of a bank account held by a Tomaz company tied to Rede Loto’s business. The messages date back to May 2025.

In the PF’s reading, the senator kept at least an operational link to the account. The Federal Police report states:

“Several pieces of evidence were identified indicating a close relationship between Willer and Flávio Bolsonaro.”

Magazine piauí pushed the story further on October 20, naming the brand at the center: BestBet, operated by Rede Loto under an authorization from Loterj, the Rio de Janeiro state lottery.

Rede Loto’s sole shareholder is Cathedral Holdings, which Tomaz set up in Madeira, Portugal, in January 2023. He and his family hold most of its shares.

The account in the emails belonged to Alcazar Holdings, according to piauí. The company shares Cathedral’s formal owner, administrator and Portuguese address.

BestBet’s authorization carries the signature of then-Loterj president Hazenclever Cançado. Folha de S.Paulo reported that Cançado got the job on Bolsonaro’s nomination. The PF is also examining possible irregularities in the licensing.

Loterj’s licenses were under legal fire long before this inquiry. The state charged operators a 5% tax on gross gaming revenue, well below the federal rate. On January 2, 2025, Justice André Mendonça barred Loterj licensees from taking bets outside Rio and ordered geolocation checks.

Brazil’s R$5bn bettor

Tomaz also tops the country’s betting tables. A technical note from the Finance Ministry’s Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA), first reported by UOL, puts his 2025 turnover on Blaze at R$5bn. No other individual came close.

He deposited more than R$258m over the year and withdrew around R$200m. On October 30, 2025 alone, he made 14 deposits of R$500,000 each, worth R$7m in total.

His defense says every movement passed through his own bank account and can be traced. It rejects any reading of the activity as money laundering.

Tomaz insists BestBet never went live. Internet Archive snapshots cited in the Brazilian press show its domain online since at least December 2023.

The lawyer was already known to police. In August, he was a search-and-seizure target in Operação Sem Desconto, an inquiry linked to fraud against the INSS social security system.

Speaking to Valor, Tomaz called the leak strange. He accused authorities of turning the police against him to recycle baseless claims and sway the election. He also said there had been no irregular transactions.

Bolsonaro’s press office did not immediately answer Valor. His defense told Estadão the reports were erroneous, arguing that a newly registered case awaiting analysis had been presented as a new investigation.

His campaign called the inquiry politically motivated, according to Brazilian press reports. Both men say they are friends with no business ties. No charges have been filed.

Shadow over Sunday

The friendship has also played out at altitude. Bolsonaro has acknowledged flying on a private jet part-owned by Tomaz and former Banco Master banker Daniel Vorcaro. At an event in late September, he said:

“I took several trips with him, so there is absolutely nothing wrong.”

Vorcaro sits at the center of the Dark Horse inquiry, the earlier of Bolsonaro’s two STF cases. Mendonça authorized it in July at the PF’s request, to examine suspected money laundering, currency evasion and corruption in financing a film about former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Its existence became public in September, after Mendonça lifted secrecy on Banco Master files at the request of Chief Justice Edson Fachin. The Dark Horse inquiry itself remained sealed.

In May, news site Intercept Brasil reported messages showing Bolsonaro sought R$134m from Vorcaro for the film. Around R$61m was paid, according to PF findings cited in the Brazilian press. Bolsonaro says the film received only private investment and denies wrongdoing.

Valor also reported that police found Bolsonaro tried to reach Vorcaro by WhatsApp call on each of the four days before the banker’s first arrest last November.

The campaign has reached the electoral court too. On October 20, the Superior Electoral Court unanimously upheld an order removing posts that linked Bolsonaro to the PF’s Operation Unha e Carne and to organized crime. The court found the posts lacked a minimal factual basis.

Betting on the ballot

Bolsonaro faces President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the October 25 runoff. Under the Clean Record Law, ineligibility for crimes such as money laundering generally requires a conviction by a collegiate court or a final ruling.

The vote lands on a market already turned upside down. Lula’s online gambling ban took licensed betting sites offline on October 6, and the runoff could shape its future. Congress received 99 proposed amendments to the measure, five of which have since been withdrawn.

Industry association ANJL estimates in a preliminary survey that more than 3,500 betting jobs have been lost. Federal investigators were already circling the sector: in late August, prosecutors and the Federal Revenue Service searched Betnacional owner NSX over suspected tax evasion, currency evasion and money laundering.

No next procedural step has been announced in the Tomaz inquiry. As rapporteur, Moraes will set its course, including whether investigators widen the money trail from Rede Loto and return to Loterj’s licensing record.