Court reopens €6.7 million Germany 2006 World cup gala night fraud against ex-DFB officials

 

FRANKFURT – The proceedings against three former German Football Federation (DFB) top officials in connection with the 2006 World Cup in Germany are to continue, the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt decided on Monday.

The court annulled last October’s decision by the district court in Frankfurt to close the probe against former DFB presidents Theo Zwanziger and Wolfgang Niersbach, as well as former DFB general secretary Horst R Schmidt.

The case centres on a payment of €6.7 million ($7.25 million) the DFB paid via football governing body FIFA to the late businessman Robert Louis-Dreyfus, declared as part of a World Cup gala which never took place.

World Cup chief organizer and 1974 World Cup winner Franz Beckenbauer had received a loan of the same sum from Louis-Dreyfus in 2002, with that money ending up on a account by now disgraced former FIFA top official Mohammed bin Hammam. It remains unclear what the money was for.

“The public prosecutor’s office accuses the three defendants of tax evasion or aiding and abetting evasion of corporate tax, solidarity surcharge, trading tax and sales tax for the year 2006,” a statement from the higher court read.

The regional court decided last year to close the probe after a trial against the three former DFB officials and FIFA general secretary Urs Linsi in Switzerland was discontinued.

Schmidt’s defence team said back then that the case was closed due to “a procedural impediment that cannot be removed.”

This refers to a law that a person can not be punished or acquitted more than once on the same charge, as the German and Swiss authorities were both investigating on suspicion of fraud, and the Swiss had closed the case.

The higher court, however, said it’s not a complex of “inextricably linked facts,” even if both charges are linked to a coherent historical complex.