World Cup 2006
DFB lawyer: Beckenbauer thought about resigning
The public prosecutor’s office accuses former DFB officials Theo Zwanziger (l), Horst R. Schmidt (ml) and Wolfgang Niersbach (r) of tax evasion. photo
© Arne Dedert/dpa/POOL/dpa
At the Sommermächen trial in Frankfurt, new details about the controversial million-dollar payment from the German Football Association emerged.
This emerges from statements made by DFB lawyer Jan Olaf Leisner at the so-called summer fairy tale trial before the Frankfurt regional court, which he presented on the third day of the trial with reference to a statement made by the former association general secretary Horst R. Schmidt. The then OC boss Beckenbauer, who has since died, expressed the idea of resigning at a meeting because the matter was “growing over his head”.
The trial, which began in March, concerns a payment of 6.7 million euros that the German Football Association transferred via FIFA to the French entrepreneur Robert Louis-Dreyfus in April 2005. Beckenbauer had received exactly this sum as a loan from Louis-Dreyfus three years earlier; these 6.7 million ultimately ended up with former FIFA Vice President Mohammed bin Hammam.
According to Leisner, former soccer star Günter Netzer, as Louis-Dreyfus’s business partner, repeatedly urged the DFB to repay the loan. The association saw the danger that Beckenbauer would become the face of German football and the World Cup. Former national player Netzer is scheduled to testify in court in May. Further dates are scheduled until the end of October.
The public prosecutor’s office accuses the former top officials Theo Zwanziger, Wolfgang Niersbach and Schmidt of having improperly included the money in the association’s tax return for 2006 as a business expense in determining profits.
On Thursday, Leisner explained in detail what he considered to be the legality of the business expense. The DFB lawyer and Schmidt’s legal advisor Tilman Reichling reject the accusation that the money from the World Cup award was used to buy votes. Senior public prosecutor Jesco Kümmel made no secret of the fact that he considers Leisner’s explanations about business expenses to be “nonsense.” He spoke of the possibility that the DFB “has developed a semi-legal corruption model.”