The advanced age of the defendants in the so-called “Summer Fairy Tale” trial affected the second day of the trial in a row. After 78-year-old Theo Zwanziger, the former president of the German Football Association (DFB), was unable to appear before the Frankfurt regional court last Thursday for health reasons, he was present on Monday. After almost four hours of questioning by tax investigator Lutz Frank, who testified as a witness, Zwanziger’s defense attorney Hans-Jörg Metz asked for an interruption, citing his client’s appearance “against medical advice.” Frank will be questioned further next Monday; the witness hearing of former DFB President Fritz Keller planned for the afternoon of May 6th is expected to be postponed.
The presiding judge, Eva-Marie Distler, began questioning Senior District Councilor Frank shortly after ten in the morning. The tax investigator presented the results of the investigations into payments in 2002 and 2005 before the 2006 World Cup, which were initiated after the “Spiegel” reported in October 2015. “Spiegel” had accepted bribe payments in view of the money flows, Frank said on Monday: “When it comes to bribe payments, tax evasion is not far off,” the consideration was the starting point of the investigation. With his statements he incriminated the defendants, including Zwanziger, the former DFB general secretary Horst R. Schmidt and the DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach, who was in office in 2015. All three were part of the organizing committee for the 2006 World Cup, Zwanziger only from the summer of 2003.
Questioning by defense lawyers is still pending
However, at the time his questioning was interrupted on Monday afternoon, Frank had not yet been questioned by the defendant’s defense attorneys; In addition, the tax assessment of the relevant DFB tax return for 2006 will not be the subject of his questioning until next Monday. According to Frank’s account, the documents seized during searches in November 2015 at the DFB headquarters and in the defendants’ apartments lead to the conclusion that the defendants were unaware of the actual reason for the transfer of 6.7 million euros to the International Football Association FIFA knew about it in 2005. The money was passed on by the world association to Robert Louis-Dreyfus, but for the transfer to FIFA the DFB had given a subsidy for a later canceled gala to open the World Cup the following year.
In fact, as Schmidt, now 82 years old, heard and confirmed in court on Monday, three years earlier, in 2002, a payment of ten million francs to Mohammed Bin Hammam, a key member of the FIFA Finance Committee, necessary to receive a subsidy of 250 million francs from the world association to finance the World Cup. Former FIFA President Joseph Blatter gave his basic consent to the subsidy from his association in a one-on-one conversation with World Cup organizer Franz Beckenbauer; details would have to be discussed with the Finance Commission.
Ten million loan for Beckenbauer
Louis-Dreyfus stepped in as a guarantor and provided Beckenbauer with a loan of ten million Swiss francs. From a Kitzbühel account belonging to Beckenbauer, to which he and his manager Robert Schwan had access, a total of ten million francs ended up in an account in Switzerland with the Qatari company Kemco. Behind this is the former Qatari FIFA official Mohammed Bin Hammam. The reason given for the transfer of the millions transferred in tranches between June and August 2002 was TV and marketing rights “Asian Games 2006”, in some cases just “Asian Games 2006”.
Uli Hoeneß, the honorary president of FC Bayern Munich, a companion of Beckenbauer and Schwan for decades, vehemently doubted in his testimony 14 days ago that Schwan could be interested in such rights trading. When asked by Judge Distler whether the Frankfurt tax investigators had found any indication of another, such a concealed purpose for payment, Frank answered in the negative. A request for legal assistance from the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office to the Emirate of Qatar was never answered.
Louis-Dreyfus demanded money back
From 2003 onwards, Louis-Dreyfus, who died in 2009, demanded the money back. At that time, the French entrepreneur, as the man behind the marketing company Infront, also had other matters to do with German football celebrities; the request for repayment was brought to the World Cup organizers through his business partner Günter Netzer. Netzer, who is also expected to testify as a witness in the trial, appeared in August 2003 as Zwanziger’s and Schmidt’s chauffeur at a meeting in Louis-Dreyfus’ Swiss holiday home.
Ultimately the debt was paid off in 2005. An email found on one of Schmidt’s computers stated that the then World Cup OK treasurer Zwanziger had suggested paying FIFA a subsidy for the gala, with the proviso that it repay the Louis Dreyfus loan. On April 27, 2005, the money was received by FIFA under the intended purpose “Football Gala”, and a day later Louis-Dreyfus received a transfer with the intended purpose for the 2006 World Cup.
The defendants deny criminal conduct and state that the money was in any case an expense for the 2006 Football World Cup and was therefore rightly claimed for tax purposes. The prosecution accuses them of unlawfully claiming operating expenses and reducing taxes by a total of 13.7 million euros. The trial, which began in March, currently has trial days scheduled until October.
