Lottery blackout: dispute between Sitelbra and Oi affects payments and security.
Since Saturday night (August 1st), thousands of lottery outlets across Brazil have been without a working system. The lottery outlets were not processing payments for social benefits, utility bills, or tax collection. Outside, lines formed in front of closed gates.
The reason was hundreds of kilometers away from the agencies: a financial dispute between the telecommunications operator Sitelbra and the Oi Group, at the heart of a judicial recovery process that has been dragging on for years. In the early hours of Monday (August 3), the 7th Business Court of Rio de Janeiro intervened and ordered the immediate restoration of services.
The power outage that paralyzed essential services.
Sitelbra, a Brazilian company specializing in high-speed connectivity, IP transit, and data center infrastructure , operated contracts with the Oi Group to provide the network infrastructure that supported a chain of public services. On Saturday night (August 1st), without prior notice and without judicial authorization, the company unilaterally interrupted the provision of these services.
The impact was immediate and nationwide. According to the court decision issued by Judge Simone Gastesi Chevrand, the outage paralyzed 70 lottery outlets of Caixa Econômica Federal distributed across 18 states; 1.066 customer data links of Oi spread across 26 states; 294 circuits responsible for the cameras of the video surveillance system of the Public Security Secretariat of Bahia (the "Video Police" project); and 36 circuits of Enel Energia in Ceará, resulting in total unavailability in 34 municipalities in Ceará. Services to the Government of Goiás were also affected.
Information obtained by BNLData indicates that approximately 2 lottery outlets have been without service since Saturday. Caixa contacted the judge responsible for the case as soon as the outage was identified. The situation has generated indignation among lottery operators. "It's a fight between Caixa and Sitelbra, and we lottery operators are the ones who suffer," stated one lottery operator. He added: "Certainly, the lotteries that are without service today will be back online tomorrow, and they've taken other lotteries offline; they must be rotating the blocking of lotteries to pressure Caixa."
The dispute behind the blackout
Sitelbra is listed as an extrajudicial creditor in Oi's judicial reorganization process. In theory, extrajudicial credits have priority over others in the payment queue, but a second-instance decision had suspended the enforceability of these credits, including those of Sitelbra. The company undergoing reorganization argued that, even so, it had been making partial monthly payments to the operator through the Judicial Administrator responsible for the process.
The judge acknowledged this history. In her decision, she noted that the court had already been called upon on an emergency basis in similar situations involving companies such as Nava Software, Nava Serviços e Outsourcing, and HHughes, and that in all those cases it had ordered the restoration of services interrupted without prior notification. "It would be no different here," she noted in her decision.
The judge's assessment was straightforward: by interrupting services without prior notification and in disregard of the court order suspending the enforceability of the debt, Sitelbra acted arbitrarily. The judge considered, however, that forcing the company to maintain services without any compensation would constitute unjust enrichment for the company undergoing judicial reorganization and would violate constitutional principles.
Preliminary injunction with a deadline and multimillion-dollar fine.
The decision by the 7th Business Court partially granted the requested precautionary measure and imposed obligations on Sitelbra on two fronts.
The operator has a maximum of 12 hours to reconnect all circuits and data links that were disconnected starting August 1, 2026, as per SAP Contract 4600053683. Failure to comply will subject the company to a daily penalty of R$ 5 million, in addition to an official letter being sent to the Public Prosecutor's Office of the State of Rio de Janeiro for investigation of the crime of disobedience by Sitelbra's directors. The company is also prohibited from interrupting services again without prior judicial authorization.
In parallel, the judge ordered the Judicial Administrator to submit, within five days, a detailed spreadsheet of the amounts owed under the contracts signed with Sitelbra and the payments made in the last three months. This measure aims to provide transparency regarding the consideration actually paid during the judicial reorganization and may form the basis for a more structured solution to the financial impasse between the parties.
The decision acknowledges the tension that places the Judiciary in an atypical position. The judge even noted in the decision itself that she understands it is not the Court's duty to guarantee the continuity of public services, a responsibility that would fall to the Executive branch. Even so, she stated that she will not fail to address the needs of the population in a process that, in her words, "ultimately takes on a structural nature."
