Media
reports reveals that Swiss prosecutors had charged three former German Football
Association (DFB) officials, including ex-president Theo Zwanziger, with an
alledged fraud relating to the 2006 World Cup.
In
a statement released from the attorney general's office affirmed that the
accused "are alleged to have fraudulently misled the members of a
supervisory body of the DFB organising committee for the 2006 World Cup in
Germany " in April 2005 about the true purpose of a payment of around 6.7
million euros.
Hors
Schmidt, a former secretary of the German football federation, has also been
accused of fraud -- along with the Swiss “Urs Linsi”, who was secretary general
of FIFA from June 1999 to June 2007.
Also
charged with fraud includes; Wolfgang Niersbach, who was a member of the 2006
bid committee and vice-president of the organising committee, all has been
charged with complicity in fraud.
Charges
of money-laundering were dismissed in July, the OAG said.
However,
All four have denied the claims.
"This
whole Swiss campaign is wretched, malicious and will completely fail, because I
have nothing to reproach myself for," Zwanziger told AFP subsidiary SID.
"These
incompetent investigators are banging their heads against a brick wall, and the
wall will always win. The whole thing has long been a judiciary scandal and
there has been no truly reproachable behaviour on the part of the
accused."
Legal
Proceedings against Franz Beckenbauer, a German football legend, was also
indicted in the investigation, have been deferred because of the 1974 World Cup
winning captain's ill health.
The
office of the attorney general's statement said that Beckenbauer "is
unable for health reasons to participate or to be questioned in the main hearing
in the Federal Criminal Court (FCC)."
The
announcement comes at the end of an investigation which opened in November 2015
into a payment of 6.7 million euros made in 2005 by the DFB to Robert
Louis-Dreyfus, former head of Adidas, a partner of the DFB.
The
German weekly Der Spiegel broke the story in late October 2015 when it claimed
that Germany used a secret fund of 10 million Swiss francs (6.7 million euros
at the time) to buy votes in the bid to stage the 2006 World Cup.
"This
sum was used to fund various payments made via a Swiss law firm to a Qatari
company belonging to Mohammed Bin Hammam," the statement said.
At
the time, Bin Hammam was a member of the FIFA Executive Committee and the FIFA
Finance Committee.
In
May 2018, Zwanziger was charged along with other former German football
officials for "aggravated tax fraud" in the case.
But
the procedure was abandoned five months later, for lack of evidence. However,
the prosecution have since appealed the decision.
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