World Cup 2006
Tax investigators incriminate defendants in DFB trial
The public prosecutor’s office accuses the three former DFB officials Theo Zwanziger (l), Horst R. Schmidt and Wolfgang Niersbach (M) of tax evasion. photo
© Arne Dedert/dpa/POOL/dpa
In the summer fairy tale trial, the accused ex-DFB officials come under pressure through a witness statement.
The tax investigator from the Frankfurt tax office responsible for investigating the Summer Fairy Tale affair has… Ex-DFB officials Theo Zwanziger, Wolfgang Niersbach and Horst R. Schmidt, who were accused of tax evasion, were heavily indicted in the DFB trial.
According to the investigation, the 6.7 million euros that the German Football Association transferred to the world association FIFA in April 2005 was the repayment of a private loan from the French entrepreneur Robert Louis-Dreyfus for the now deceased Franz Beckenbauer Year 2002 and not a subsidy for a World Cup opening gala.
“According to our findings, the booking in 2006 was incorrect. We assumed it was a sham transaction,” said senior district councilor Lutz Frank on Monday as a witness before the Frankfurt regional court.
Accordingly, during a search of the DFB headquarters and the private apartments of the three defendants in November 2015, evidence was found that suggested that the former top officials knew about the actual purpose of the 6.7 million euro payment.
Email as evidence
For example, an email found on Schmidt’s private computer said: “…the then OC treasurer Zwanziger came up with the idea of paying a subsidy for the gala, with the proviso that this loan from Dreyfus would go to FIFA wipes out.”
Zwanziger, Niersbach and Schmidt have to answer in the trial because of allegations of tax evasion in a particularly serious case. They are said to have illegally declared the million-dollar payment as a business expense in the tax return for 2006, thereby reducing the tax for the World Cup year by around 13.7 million euros. All three defendants strictly deny the accusation.
FIFA forwarded the 6.7 million euros to Louis-Dreyfus just one day after it was received. In 2002, he transferred a loan of ten million Swiss francs to Beckenbauer’s account. This sum later ended up in a company account of the then FIFA vice-president, Mohamed bin Hammam, in Qatar.