São Paulo board expels Mara Casares and Douglas Schwartzmann | OneFootball

*By Thaís Bueno

On Thursday, São Paulo’s Deliberative Council decided to expel Mara Casares and Douglas Schwartzmann from the club’s membership. The former Tricolor directors, who had been on leave since December, are being investigated by the police for alleged involvement in an illegal scheme to sell a luxury box for concerts held at Morumbis.

The voting began last Wednesday at 10 p.m. (Brasília time) and ended this Thursday at 5 p.m. (Brasília time). The Council, which is made up of 253 members, recorded 223 votes in favor of Mara’s expulsion and 217 for Douglas’s removal.

The information was initially confirmed by ge and later confirmed by Gazeta Esportiva.

Massis’s stance

São Paulo president Harry Massis had spoken out in March in favor of removing the two from the institution’s membership.

“My vote will be in favor of expulsion. If the Ethics Committee recommended this decision, I have full confidence in the body’s investigation and believe it is best for the institution,” the president said at the time in a statement to the press.

The council members’ vote followed the recommendation in the final report of São Paulo’s Ethics Committee. In addition to being expelled from the club’s membership, both were also removed from São Paulo’s Deliberative Council.

Mara speaks out

In a statement sent to ge, Mara Casares spoke out and rejected the decision by São Paulo’s Deliberative Council. See the statement below:

“Ms. Mara Suely Soares de Melo Casares, through her attorneys Rafael Estephan Maluf and Paula Stoco de Oliveira, publicly expresses her deep repudiation of the decision handed down on this date by the Deliberative Council of São Paulo Futebol Clube, which determined the termination of her membership ties with the institution.

It should be emphasized that Ms. Mara Casares respects the bodies of the club to which she dedicated years of work with extreme dedication and care. However, she strongly disagrees with the aforementioned decision arising from an internal proceeding that was based solely on press reports.

Throughout the entire proceeding, Mara cooperated fully with the clarification of the facts, providing all the requested explanations and making herself available to the Ethics Committee of São Paulo Futebol Clube. To date, there is no concrete evidence that she obtained any financial or personal benefit in relation to the facts under investigation.

A conviction of this gravity without even minimal supporting evidence is, at the very least, a serious institutional mistake, whether for Ms. Mara or for other SPFC members, as it has created an extremely serious precedent of using the club’s internal investigations as a tool for political maneuvering.

It is regrettable that a decision of this magnitude, with such severe consequences for a person’s honor and trajectory, was adopted without the evidentiary rigor that the case requires.

Finally, Ms. Mara Casares remains certain of her innocence, supported by her conviction in her integrity and by her confidence that justice will fulfill its role.”

Recalling the luxury box case

Audio recordings involving Douglas Schwartzmann, São Paulo’s deputy academy director, and Mara Casares, ex-wife of president Julio Casares and the club’s cultural and events director, revealed an illegal scheme to sell a luxury box for concerts held at Morumbis. After the case was leaked, Schwartzmann and Mara took leave from their positions.

In the recording, revealed by ge, Schwartzmann admits that he, Mara, and other people made money from the scheme. He says that Mara Casares received a luxury box from superintendent Marcio Carlomagno and sold tickets for Colombian singer Shakira’s concert in February of this year. Carlomagno is considered the right-hand man of former president Julio Casares and the leading figure from the current administration for the 2026 election.

The luxury box that prompted the leaked recording, at the center of a legal case, was 3A in the east sector of Morumbis. In club documents, this space is listed as the “presidential room” and is located in front of São Paulo’s president’s office, now occupied by Massis.

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