Uli Hoeneß was unable to shed any light on the darkness of the affair surrounding the 2006 World Cup during his testimony in the Summer Fairy Tale trial on Monday (April 15, 2024).
He knows nothing about the intended use of the ten million Swiss francs that ended up in 2002 as a loan from the French entrepreneur Robert Louis-Dreyfus in an account belonging to Franz Beckenbauer, who has since died, and from there were forwarded to Qatar to the then FIFA vice-president Mohamed bin Hammam.
“I don’t know what the money was for,” said Hoeneß in front of the Frankfurt am Main regional court. However, the 72-year-old once again ruled out that the sum might have been used to buy votes for the 2006 World Cup. “FIFA was a pretty corrupt bunch back then. You could even think about buying a World Cup. But I’m still convinced today that the DFB and Germany didn’t do that. I’m sure of that,” said Hoeneß.
Hoeneß: “It was a taboo topic”
Despite his friendship with Beckenbauer and Louis-Dreyfus, he never spoke to either of them about what happened. “I’m only curious when it comes to things about FC Bayern or me. I didn’t ask what the money was for. It was a taboo topic,” explained Hoeneß.
Judge Eva-Marie Distler had hoped for new insights into the ominous flows of money from Hoeneß. The reason for the chairman’s acceptance were statements by Hoeneß from 2020 and 2021. At that time, Hoeneß indicated in a TV interview and a podcast that he knew why there were millions in payments around the finals in Germany.
In the trial, former DFB officials Theo Zwanziger, Wolfgang Niersbach and Horst R. Schmidt have to answer for allegations of tax evasion in a particularly serious case. They are said to have unlawfully declared a payment of 6.7 million euros made to the world association FIFA in April 2005 as a business expense and thus reduced the tax for 2006 by around 13.7 million euros. All three defendants strictly deny the accusation. “I vigorously deny that the DFB paid back the money as a relief from Franz Beckenbauer’s debt,” said former DFB President Zwanziger in the hearing.
In an interrogation by the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office in 2016, Beckenbauer explained that the ten million Swiss francs were a kind of commission in order to receive a World Cup grant of 250 million Swiss francs from the world association FIFA.
