Brazil’s Finance Ministry appointed Mariana Piccoli Lins Cavalcanti as Subsecretária de Ação Sancionadora within the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas (SPA) – the division responsible for overseeing and sanctioning sports betting platforms. The appointment, published in the Diário Oficial da União and signed by Casa Civil minister Miriam Belchior under Decree 9.794/2019, fills the vacancy left by Raiana Falcão Ferreira, who was exonerated in early September.
A career built inside federal public management
Piccoli belongs to Brazil’s Especialista em Políticas Públicas e Gestão Governamental (EPPGG) career track – an elite federal civil-service corps created in 1989 specifically to bridge political priorities and technical policy execution, staffing senior planning, regulatory and advisory roles across government. She’s held that position since taking office in 2012, and holds a law degree from the Centro Universitário de Brasília (2006), an economics degree from the Universidade de Brasília (2009), a postgraduate qualification in competition law (Defesa da Concorrência) from FGV (2011), and a master’s in economics from IDP (2022) – a combination of legal and economic training that maps closely onto sanctions work requiring both regulatory judgment and market analysis.
Her path to SPA runs directly through the Finance Ministry’s own regulatory apparatus: she previously served within the ministry’s Secretaria de Reformas Econômicas, in its Subsecretaria de Regulação e Concorrência, before moving in 2025 to an advisory role in the Departamento de Infraestrutura Nacional de Dados at the Secretaria de Governo Digital, under the Ministério da Gestão e da Inovação em Serviços Públicos. That combination – prior experience specifically in competition regulation within Fazenda, plus more recent work on federal data infrastructure — lines up closely with what SPA’s sanctions division does day to day: enforcement actions increasingly rely on data-matching and financial-tracking capabilities as much as legal process.
Part of a broader reshuffle at SPA
Piccoli’s appointment follows a wider round of leadership changes at SPA. In August, the Finance Ministry replaced Daniela Olímpio de Oliveira at the Subsecretaria de Autorizações with Fernanda Villela Oliveira, former General Coordinator of commercial-promotions oversight. Asked by Estadão about Olímpio’s departure, the ministry described the role as one of free appointment and dismissal; Olímpio said she considered her work there complete and was moving on to new challenges, while outgoing sanctions chief Raiana Falcão described her tenure as having advanced the sanctions regime, stressing that enforcement work serves an educational and preventive function as much as a punitive one.