The final act in the summer fairy tale affair will soon be in court, but the trial almost turned out to be two sizes smaller. As the Frankfurt Regional Court confirmed research by ZEIT ONLINE, two of the three defendants, Wolfgang Niersbach and Horst R. Schmidt, had agreed with the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office to discontinue the proceedings in return for paying a fine.
However, the deal failed due to the approval of the court, which was not involved in the negotiations. The third defendant, Theo Zwanziger, was excluded from the attempts to reach an agreement.
The trial will begin as planned on March 4th, says a spokesman for the regional court upon request. The public prosecutor’s office accuses the two former DFB presidents Niersbach and Zwanziger as well as the former general secretary Schmidt of tax evasion in a particularly serious case.
Essentially it’s about a payment that… Spiegel revealed in October 2015. In 2005, the DFB transferred the sum of 6.7 million euros via FIFA to the former Adidas boss Robert Louis-Dreyfus. The official purpose of this payment, which the DFB claimed as a business expense: a contribution to a World Cup gala a year later. However, the gala never took place.
In 2002, World Cup organizer Franz Beckenbauer received a loan from Louis-Dreyfus for the same amount, but the money ultimately disappeared into the account of former Fifa finance chief Mohamed bin Hammam in Qatar. Courts, lawyers and journalists never found out the true background and who profited from this money cycle. Louis-Dreyfus and Beckenbauer have since died.
The three defendants always denied the allegations. “As me the Spiegel sent a catalog with over 20 questions two days before its publication, I couldn’t respond,” said Niersbach South German newspaper: “I had no idea about these topics. Finance was not my subject.” The tax evasion doesn’t affect him personally at all, said Schmidt HE DOES, he was “for the most part not involved.” “This booking did not affect the 2006 profit and could therefore not lead to tax evasion,” said Zwanziger Bildnewspaper and spoke of a “judicial scandal”.
16 days of negotiations are scheduled for the proceedings in Frankfurt. The last one is scheduled for July 11th. Three days later, the final of the European Football Championship will take place in Berlin.
The final act in the summer fairy tale affair will soon be in court, but the trial almost turned out to be two sizes smaller. As the Frankfurt Regional Court confirmed research by ZEIT ONLINE, two of the three defendants, Wolfgang Niersbach and Horst R. Schmidt, had agreed with the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office to discontinue the proceedings in return for paying a fine.
However, the deal failed due to the approval of the court, which was not involved in the negotiations. The third defendant, Theo Zwanziger, was excluded from the attempts to reach an agreement.
