The secret vaults of the DFB
The DFB had its headquarters at Otto-Fleck-Schneise 6 in Frankfurt for 48 years. An astonishing find was made during the clean-up work to move out
Source: pa/dpa/Frank Rumpenhorst
When the DFB moves, four secret safes are discovered in the former association headquarters. Few knew of their existence. Two have been opened so far. The content is amazing at times.
Dhe DFB with its headquarters in Frankfurt has just left the building at the legendary Otto-Fleck-Schneise 6 and moved into the neighboring new campus costing 150 million euros. EURO 2024 GmbH took over parts of the old office from DFB and Uefa. There was a surprise when cleaning up: There are two rooms and four safes, of which not even the four former DFB Presidents Theo Zwanziger (77), Wolfgang Niersbach (71), Reinhard Grindel (60) and Fritz Keller (65) have anything knew.
In the course of the move, the DFB financial administration advised that you could also take a look in the two safe rooms to see if there was anything tax-relevant – which made many of those involved wide-eyed, since their existence apparently only one was known to a very small circle. One is on the ground floor next to the beverage store. There are three small safes here. And one in the basement next to the “Zirbelstube”, the in-house pub. Here is another safe. The door is secured with an eight-digit numeric code – four numbers only known to a person from the legal department, the other four only to a person from the finance department.
The problem: keys and combinations of numbers have only been found for two of the four safes. When these were opened in the presence of Secretary General Heike Ullrich, something surprising came to light. One contained parts of the estate of ex-national coach Sepp Herberger († 80), who died in April 1977, including numerous currencies from all over the world, eight necklaces from Ms. Herberger and two small fine gold bars (100 and 250 grams). Blank tickets and banderoles for DFB international matches were found in the other safe.
Niersbach’s divorce papers were also found
Old personnel files were also discovered as “by-catch” in a lockable steel cupboard on the first floor, including ex-President Niersbach’s divorce papers. Since hardly anyone knew about the rooms, the safes were possibly also overlooked by the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office during various house searches on suspicion of tax evasion, because only files in the offices and in the archive in the basement were secured.
Wolfgang Niersbach was DFB President from 2012 to 2015. He currently has to answer to the Frankfurt Regional Court
Quelle: pa/KEYSTONE/GEORGIOS KEFALAS
Nadja Niesen, spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office, could not provide any information because the investigation files were in court. Specifically: at the Frankfurt Regional Court, before which Niersbach, Zwanziger and the former DFB General Secretary Horst R. Schmidt have to answer for serious tax evasion in connection with the summer fairy tale affair about the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
DFB is looking for professional “tank crackers”
Since there are no keys or codes for the other two safes, the DFB has launched an official tender to have them opened with the help of professional “tank crackers”. What is expected is rather unspectacular. However, it cannot be ruled out that an explosive treasure may still appear – which could also relate to the summer fairy tale affair. In the end, is this the solution to the riddle of why the ominous 6.7 million euros flowed from the DFB, which ultimately ended up in Qatar with ex-Fifa deputy boss Mohamed Bin Hammam, who has now been banned for life?
The fact that the two safes have not long been broken into or are still in the old DFB headquarters and were not confiscated indicates that the public prosecutor’s office did not discover them during the house searches. The DFB tender ran for four weeks, and the two safes will be cracked shortly. And some (ex-) officials will hope that they are empty.
The text was written for the sports competence center (WELT, “Sport Bild”, “Bild”) and first published in “Sport Bild”.
