FRANKFURT (GERMANY), 31 Oct. (dpa/EP) –
The Provincial Court of Frankfurt (Germany) has filed the case against three former directors of the German Football Federation (DFB) for alleged irregularities for the concession to Germany of the 2006 World Cup, the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed to dpa on Monday.
A similar trial failed previously in Switzerland. Former German soccer officials Horst R. Schmidt, Theo Zwanziger and Wolfgang Niersbach and former FIFA Secretary General Urs Linsi received compensation in Switzerland totaling some 705,000 Swiss francs (640,000 euros).
The Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office had tried to impose the judicial costs on the former presidents. Prosecutors argued that the four had made the case difficult before it was suspended in April 2020 for having prescribed.
Former DFB Presidents Niersbach and Zwanziger, former DFB General Secretary Schmidt and Linsi were charged with the crime of fraud and complicity in fraud. It was alleged that they knowingly misreported the German federation’s €6.7m payment to FIFA in 2005. The money was reported as a contribution to a gala for the 2006 World Cup, which never took place.
The controversial transfer was reportedly used to repay a private loan granted by late businessman Robert Louis-Dreyfus to World Cup organizing committee chairman Franz Beckenbauer in 2002.
The money later ended up in an account at a company owned by former FIFA vice president Mohamed bin Hammam, who has been banned for life for corruption.
Another trial against Beckenbauer, as a key figure in the scandal, was closed in 2019 due to his health condition. All the defendants pleaded not guilty. The FIFA Independent Ethics Committee filed in February 2021 the case against Beckenbauer, Zwanziger and Schmidt for the statute of limitations.