Total chaos: voting glitch voids rejection of 2025 accounts | OneFootball

The rejection by São Paulo’s Deliberative Council of the club’s 2025 financial statements, by a wide margin, took an even more confusing second turn shortly after the vote count. The result — 194 votes against, 34 in favor, and five abstentions — ended up being nullified by a technical problem that made it necessary to repeat the process, creating an additional crisis around an issue that was already sensitive.

The central reason for the rejection was the lack of an explanation for R$ 7 million recorded as a “presidential promotional fund,” an inconsistency highlighted in the independent analysis conducted by RSM and reinforced internally by a report from the Fiscal Council.

In the club’s political environment, the interpretation was straightforward: there were enough grounds to block the financial statements.

From that point on, the story took an unlikely turn. The electronic system used for the vote had been configured incorrectly, recording the ballot as secret, when the bylaws require an open vote for this type of deliberation.

In practice, the receipts were issued without individual vote identification, making the traceability required by the Council itself impossible.

The error was acknowledged by Tafner Solutions, the company responsible for the platform. “We sincerely apologize for what happened,” the company said, attributing the issue to a parameterization error and stating that it is treating the case “with the utmost responsibility.”

The company also assured that “the case is under review in the current processes and operational procedures, with the aim of strengthening the applicable controls so that situations of this nature never happen again.”

The episode led the Council president, Olten Ayres de Abreu Júnior, to order the reopening of the vote, with a new deadline until 10 p.m. this Friday (27).

“Given the seriousness of what occurred, and in respect for the principles of the bylaws and internal regulations, which must govern the actions of this Council, I hereby order the reopening of the voting process, so that the votes may be duly collected with proper name identification,” the executive wrote.

Salve o Tricolor Paulista, a group of opposition council members, formally stated that the original result should be preserved, arguing that the operational failure does not change the total vote count already announced: “Therefore, any eventual new collection of votes will serve a merely instrumental purpose, restricted exclusively to the nominal identification of the voters, and may not, under any circumstances, alter or replace the result already proclaimed, which remains whole and untouchable.”

The trend is for the rejection to stand, even if the new vote count may vary. The current administration, led by president Harry Massis Júnior, argues that this result will affect the club’s image in the market, especially at a time when sponsorship and loan negotiations are on the agenda.

On April 6, there will be another vote on credit operations, although both have already been carried out: one in December, for R$ 30 million with Banco Tricury, at interest of CDI + 0.75% per month; and another last month, for R$ 5 million with Banco Rendimento, at interest of CDI + 0.6% per month.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.