Political crisis sees Olten quit São Paulo council presidency for good | OneFootball

Olten Ayres de Abreu Júnior temporarily stepped down from the presidency of São Paulo’s Deliberative Council after a meeting held before the body’s extraordinary session on Thursday (14), with vice president João Farias Júnior and Antônio Maria Patiño Zorz, president of the body’s ethics committee.

The conversation delayed the start of the meeting by about an hour and a half. The meeting reviewed two loans and important club contracts, including Unimed’s new sponsorship on the back of the shirt.

“I made this decision so as not to worsen the club’s institutional crisis,” Olten said. In an official statement, he said recent events “have created a troubling scenario of instability within the club”: “In recent days, important decisions have been made without following the rules set out in the statute, generating conflicts of interpretation, overlap of duties, and measures with no clear basis in the internal rules.”

The official will remain out of office until the investigations conducted by the ethics committee are concluded. During this period, the Council will be chaired by Farias, who already presided over Thursday’s session. Hours before the meeting, Olten had announced that the session would be broadcast live on the club’s official YouTube channel. After his temporary leave was defined, the idea was dropped.

The leave comes amid an escalation of the internal political conflict involving the executive, who is facing proceedings for alleged reckless management, opened at the request of club president Harry Massis Júnior.

At the same time, the ethics committee requested his preventive removal while it investigates possible irregularities in his administration. Tensions increased after Olten’s attempt to remove members of the ethics committee itself, a decision later overturned by Farias.

The vice president also declared Olten barred from acting in matters related to the disciplinary proceeding in which he is under investigation. The vote on the preventive suspension was initially scheduled for the 8th, then rescheduled for the 12th, but was ultimately suspended indefinitely after council members submitted a “request for clarification regarding the statute and rules,” questioning the way the meeting had been called and the interpretation of the internal rules.

The agreement reached yesterday provides that Olten will present his defense before any eventual vote on a permanent removal, so that his arguments can be analyzed by the ethics committee before its final opinion is issued.

In addition to the internal dispute within the Council, Olten has also become the subject of a police investigation looking into possible false statements in the process to reform the statute, which began last year during Júlio Casares’s administration.

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