The public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt has discontinued preliminary investigations against the former DFB officials Reinhard Grindel, Friedrich Curtius and Stephan Osnabrügge. The proceedings concerned the alleged withholding and misappropriation of wages in connection with the question of a possible social security obligation for members of the DFB executive committee. The setting was now due to a lack of suspicion and with an order of April 27th, as the authority confirmed on Wednesday when asked by dpa.
For the association, the termination of the investigation is no surprise. “Right from the start, the DFB had taken the legal position that criminal liability was excluded, since, in agreement with the German Pension Insurance Association, model proceedings were still being conducted to clarify the question of whether the members of the Executive Committee who were active in elective and honorary positions were subject to social security contributions at all,” it said it.
The clarification means that contributions are not yet due and therefore cannot be withheld. “Criminal liability was therefore excluded from the outset,” wrote the DFB. Former President Grindel left the association in April 2019, while former General Secretary Curtius and the DFB agreed to terminate the contract in 2021.
Almost a year ago, the public prosecutor’s office had stopped investigations into Grindel and Curtius, at that time against the payment of a monetary condition. In June 2022, it was a matter of evading corporate and trade taxes in particularly serious cases for the benefit of others. In detail, it was about income from perimeter advertising in 2014 and 2015. In October 2020, there was a major raid with 200 officers in the Frankfurt association headquarters. At this point, the DFB had already paid the disputed 4.7 million euros in taxes.
