Dusseldorf According to information from the Handelsblatt, the Frankfurt Regional Court has once again closed the file on the legal clarification of dubious cash flows in the awarding of the 2006 World Cup. It closed the proceedings for serious tax evasion against the former Presidents of the German Football Association (DFB) Wolfgang Niersbach and Theo Zwanziger as well as ex-DFB General Secretary Horst R. Schmidt.
The back and forth about a possible criminal case for the so-called summer fairy tale continues: “The public prosecutor’s office will file an immediate complaint,” said a spokeswoman for the Handelsblatt. Now the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court has to deal with the case again – for the second time.
The background to the procedure is a transfer from 2005. At that time, 6.7 million euros flowed from the DFB – first to the world football association Fifa and from there to the late Adidas boss Robert Louis-Dreyfus. The sum was declared as a contribution to a gala to mark the start of the World Cup, which never took place. In fact, the money was intended to repay a loan that Franz Beckenbauer, then head of World Cup organization, had received privately from Louis-Dreyfus in 2002.
As investigators later found out, it had been transferred by Beckenbauer to the accounts of the then FIFA official Mohamed bin Hammam from Qatar. What exactly the money went to the demonstrably corrupt official for is still unclear today.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
The DFB then claimed the payment as an operating expense for tax purposes. The public prosecutor’s office therefore accuses the former DFB officials of having concealed the repayment and of having submitted a false tax return for the 2006 World Cup year. Overall, corporation, trade and sales taxes as well as a solidarity surcharge of over 13.7 million euros are said to have been reduced in favor of the DFB, according to the accusation.
>> Also read: “Accompanying use” – Like Bayern Munich and Adidas helped to bring the purchased 2006 World Cup to Germany
Investigators filed charges as early as spring 2018. But the regional court (LG) Frankfurt did not see sufficient suspicion and refused to open the proceedings in October 2018. Almost a year later, the higher regional court in Frankfurt overturned the decision of the regional court, allowed the indictment and referred the case back to the regional court.
The DFB officials and their defenders reacted with incomprehension at the time. They vehemently deny the allegations.
The officials had only recently been charged in Switzerland at the beginning of August 2019. The federal prosecutor’s office there accused them of “malicious deception”. In the case of Zwanziger and Schmidt, the accusations were that they were complicit in fraud, and in the case of Niersbach, that they were aiding and abetting in fraud.
But because the process was not completed by the end of April 2020, the case became statute-barred. The Federal Criminal Court was then confronted with allegations of kidnapping, which it rejected and referred, among other things, to “procedural circumstances and requirements in connection with the coronavirus pandemic”.
DFB waving tax refunds of more than 20 million euros
The statute of limitations in Switzerland now also has consequences for the German procedure. According to information from the Handelsblatt, the Frankfurt Regional Court justified its decision with the so-called consumption of criminal charges. It means that no one may be sentenced more than once for one crime. This applies both to the conviction and essentially to the acquittal.
The district court now apparently evaluated the accused cases in Switzerland and in Frankfurt as an act of crime. The fact that the Swiss trial ended neither with a conviction nor with an acquittal, but with the statute of limitations, apparently did not stand in the way of the use of criminal charges in the court’s view. When asked, the district court declined to comment.
The proceedings against the former Fifa Secretary General Urs Linsi, who was initially accused with the DFB trio, had already been discontinued at the end of 2021 against payment of a monetary requirement of 150,000 euros. The public prosecutor had accused him of aiding and abetting tax evasion. Linsi is legally innocent.
If the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court joins the regional court in the matter of the closure of the proceedings, the DFB is entitled to a high tax refund from the Frankfurt tax office. Because the tax office had retrospectively revoked the non-profit status of the association for 2006. The DFB then paid back taxes of 19.2 million euros. Including interest, the DFB should now receive a refund of well over 20 million euros.
Should it still come to a trial, the officials would face prison sentences of up to five years or fines if convicted.
More: Theo Zwanziger is filing criminal charges against public prosecutors