Dhe President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), Alfons Hörmann, and his executive committee tried with massive pressure to force a former board member of the umbrella organization to admit to the affair surrounding the “anonymous letter”. This emerges from a letter that Karin Fehres sent to the Presidium and the Board of Directors on November 9th. The letter is at faz.net.
In it, Ms. Fehres, who was head of sports development at the DOSB until December 2020, describes a Berlin law firm on behalf of Hörmann and the DOSB board that she is the author of the “anonymous letter” published in May, in which a “culture of Anxiety ”in the DOSB under Hörmann is the talk. In her letter, Ms. Fehres describes how Hörmann and the DOSB justified the claim towards her. According to this, “there is an opinion from a language expert in which it is determined”, writes Ms. Fehres and then quotes from the lawyer’s letter “that the open letter can only come from you”. Therefore, she continues her written reaction, “(…) should serve as evidence before the investigative authorities or the courts.”
Karin Fehres rejects the “allegations” as “absurd and unfounded”. “I reject them emphatically and with all determination and make it unmistakably clear: I did not write the anonymous mail of May 6, 2021, and I have not contributed to it in any way.”
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Hörmann and the DOSB management see themselves heavily burdened by the anonymous mail. According to Karin Fehres, this is what they write in the attorney’s letter: “Numerous media took up the open letter as well as the subsequent recommendation of the ethics committee in order to criticize Mr. Hörmann and the DOSB. The damage to our clients’ reputation is immense. “
Even before the anonymous letter, there had been complaints about Hörmann’s administration. Following the recommendation of the DOSB’s ethics committee to face a vote of no confidence for various reasons, he announced his retirement from the office of president at the general meeting at the beginning of December. As you can hear, the outgoing DOSB boss wants to become honorary president. There is some resistance to this.
Ms. Fehres also makes it clear in her letter how she was put under pressure. In the attorney’s letter of October 13th, it was suggested that she enter into a deal. The DOSB and the President had offered her an alleged concession, wrote Ms. Fehres and then quoted again from the law firm’s offer to her, “(…) to forego the judicial assertion of injunctive relief and the filing of a criminal complaint if you are confess to the authorship of the open letter dated May 6th, 2021 and, together with our clients, contribute to a statement to the press and media in which you admit that you wrote the open letter on your own. ”In return, anonymity was promised. And the waiver of filing a criminal complaint.
“The unjustified allegations and allegations of the DOSB and Mr. Hörmann stunned me. The legal relevance of the incomprehensible request that I make an untruthful declaration of authorship (…), as well as other inconsistencies in the letter from the Berlin law firm, will be checked by the law firm Thon & Partner, ”added Ms. Fehres. A letter dated October 26th with the request for immediate clarification is still today (9. November/d.Red.) remained unanswered.
According to her own account, Ms. Fehres was asked by a Wiesbaden law firm to provide information on the anonymous letter before the letter from a lawyer dated October 13th. After consulting with the DOSB’s ethics committee, she refused to do so, as she had “fully” participated in the investigation of this body into the case. Karin Fehres quotes an assessment of the ethics commission headed by the former Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Mazière: “We are unanimously of the opinion that we do not consider the legal assignment by the DOSB to be expedient and inappropriate.” The DOSB board of directors agrees Ms. Fehres has been informed about it.
Transparency calls for a fresh start
The anti-corruption organization Transparency International in the DOSB sees a blatant lack of understanding of good association management in the letter to Karin Fehres. In addition to the structural principles and rules, “good governance” always includes “the integrity of those responsible at the top”, explains Nicole Espey, head of the Sport working group at Transparency Germany.
The accusation of a “culture of fear” in the DOSB, as raised in the anonymous letter in May, is fully confirmed by the current procedure. From the perspective of Transparency, the DOSB top did not understand at all what the complaints from the workforce were about. That is why the organization demands a complete new start with regard to “good governance” in the DOSB.
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