The Council of Ethics of COB (Olympic Committee of Brazil) suspended the athlete Wallace, 35, from Sada Cruzeiro and Olympic champion, from all sports activities that take place under the control of the entity, in a preventive manner. The athlete will have five days, from the receipt of the summons, to present his defense.
The decision is contained in a document signed by Ney Bello, reporting member.
The suspension meets the request of the AGU (Advocacia Geral da União) to punish the player. The requests were regarding the initiation of disciplinary proceedings, with a fine of R$ 100,000 and banishment from Olympic sport.
The Council also decided that the AGU is an interested party and has the right to follow the process until the end.
Last Monday (30), Wallace posted photos at a shooting club and allowed questions from followers on Instagram. One of them questioned whether the opposite of Cruzeiro would shoot the President of the Republic, Luz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in the face. The player opened a poll in the application to find out if his followers would do that.
He deleted the post shortly afterwards, but recordings with the image of the poll were already circulating on social networks.
Wallace was part of the Brazilian team that won a gold medal in Rio-2016 and a silver medal in London-2012.
“Suggesting, asking, inciting the use of weapons and, worse, the detonation in the face of the highest authority of the country for no reason and under no criteria conforms to the expected, required and expected behavior of an Olympic champion”, states the document dated February 3rd.
“Minimizing acts of this nature implies not only a ruthless omission in the defense of rationality, but also mistakenly signals towards the normalization of the absurd, allowing acts to be repeated and chaos to be established”, says the order.
“For this reason, the athlete Wallace Leandro de Souza must be cautiously suspended from all sports activities in the COB system – and consequently its affiliates – until this procedure is completed.”
Article 286 of the Penal Code defines the offense of incitement to crime. It is about encouraging or publicly encouraging the commission of a crime. The penalty provided for in this case is imprisonment of three to six months.
Faced with the repercussions of the case, Wallace posted a video on his social networks apologizing for the episode.
Last Tuesday, Sada Cruzeiro announced the suspension of the player from the team for an indefinite period.
The CBV (Brazilian Volleyball Confederation) and the COB released notes repudiating the athlete’s behavior.
“The CBV repudiates any act of violence or incitement to violent acts and understands that sport is a tool for propagating values such as respect, tolerance and equality”, said the Confederation.
The player has not yet commented on the suspensions.
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