The summer fairy tale scandal is now seven years old. In the fall of 2015, dubious payments related to the 2006 World Cup were uncovered, and two law enforcement agencies got to work. The public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt investigated on suspicion of tax evasion and the federal prosecutor’s office in Bern on suspicion of fraud.
But after seven years, the balance sheet is sobering. The procedure in Switzerland has long expired and petered out, and the one in Frankfurt has now been closed by the district court for formal reasons. Although the public prosecutor’s office can take action against it, the chances are likely to be rather manageable.
So the summer fairy tale remains a big, dark secret. Because the key question about the process that triggered the whole affair is still unresolved: Why did ten million Swiss francs flow in 2002 from the German World Cup boss Franz Beckenbauer to the Qatari businessman and Fifa official Mohammed bin Hammam?
The history of these investigations is the history of a massive failure of the judiciary – in particular by the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office. The affair has two central figures: Franz Beckenbauer and Mohammed bin Hammam. But the two didn’t play the role that would have been appropriate. In Frankfurt, Beckenbauer was only a witness anyway, in Switzerland the case against him was separated for health reasons. And the money recipient at the time, bin Hammam, was left almost completely alone – although the Swiss had sufficient reason to investigate him.
The investigations in Bern were delayed in such a grotesque way that the main hearing began in spring 2020 just before the end of the statute of limitations – and then could not be completed in time. And now, two and a half years later, this crude spectacle also provides the reason why the Frankfurt Regional Court dropped the German proceedings: the trio had already been to a Swiss court because of the matter, and to be in court twice because of one thing was against the law.
And what does all this mean for the summer fairy tale? According to everything that can be gathered from the evidence so far about the ten million payment from 2002, it probably had no direct connection with the award of the World Cup – but rather with a television rights deal from which Beckenbauer personally benefited. First of all, that doesn’t make it any less disreputable, on the contrary. And secondly, even without this million-dollar payment to Qatar, there are enough events on the table to describe the World Cup as bought. Just think – but not exclusively – of the contract with which the German advertisers promised the scandal official Jack Warner services to the equivalent of ten million marks four days before the award in the summer of 2000.
Even if the legal proceedings now end without a concrete result. The so-called summer fairy tale that once shone so brightly is tainted forever.