Lauro Gonzalez

Lauro Gonzalez is a Brazilian economist and former Fundação Getulio Vargas researcher who serves as deputy secretary of the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA) at Brazil's Ministry of Finance. In this role he has been associated with the technical implementation of Brazil's regulated fixed-odds betting market, including operator authorization, responsible-gambling safeguards, and the collection and presentation of the market's revenue and tax data.

Before entering the betting-regulatory field, Gonzalez was a professor at FGV's EAESP business school and coordinator of the FGV Center for Microfinance and Financial Inclusion (CEMIF), with a research focus on financial inclusion and consumer finance. His work using Brazilian instant-payment data drew attention to the scale of spending by low-income Brazilians, including Bolsa Família benefit recipients, on online betting platforms.

That research positioned him as a prominent non-industry voice in Brazil's gambling-regulation debate. Public appointment coverage places his move into the Ministry of Finance as SPA deputy secretary in 2024, where he has also become one of the public faces explaining the regulated betting market's results, tax collection, and policy choices.