As mayor of Ribeirao Preto, a city of 500, 000 in Sao Paulo state, Mr Palocci privatised some municipal services and brought businessmen into his administration.

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In one of the cases Teixeira posts about, he claims AC Milan owes Botafogo FC of Ribeirao Preto compensation involving its training of the player Sergio Ceregatti.

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For the first chunk of his career he was playing full-time for Botafogo while going to medical school at the University of Sao Paulo's campus in Ribeirao Preto.

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In the early 1990s, when privatisation was still heresy in Brazil, Mr Palocci, then mayor of Ribeirao Preto, a city in Sao Paulo's farmbelt, sold the municipal telephone company and called on private investors to build a water-treatment system.

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