Almost 18 years after the World Cup in Germany, the trial surrounding the so-called summer fairy tale begins in the Frankfurt am Main regional court. The proceedings started with the reading of the indictment. Three former high-ranking officials of the German Football Association (DFB) are accused of tax evasion in a particularly serious case. The public prosecutor’s office accuses the former DFB presidents Wolfgang Niersbach and Theo Zwanziger as well as the former DFB general secretary Horst Schmidt of having arranged for false tax returns to be submitted in connection with the men’s World Cup.
As a result, corporate, trade and sales taxes as well as solidarity surcharges for 2006 amounting to more than 13.7 million euros were not paid. According to the indictment, a committee responsible for the organization is said to have received around 6.7 million euros in 2005. The DFB claimed this money in its annual financial statements as operating expenses for a World Cup gala. The World Cup gala never took place – in fact there is said to have been another purpose.
An initial 24 negotiation dates have been scheduled until the end of October. Zwanziger (DFB President from 2004 to 2012) and Niersbach (DFB President from 2012 to 2015) as well as the former general secretary Horst R. Schmidt, like the recently deceased Franz Beckenbauer, were part of the organizing committee of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. All three have always denied the allegations.
The role of Franz Beckenbauer
The trial is solely about the question of whether this sum was incorrectly recorded by the DFB in the tax return. It is therefore not to be expected that there will be any new information about the purpose of the 6.7 million euros that the DFB transferred to the world association Fifa in April 2005 and from there was forwarded to Qatar to the then Fifa vice-president Mohammed bin Hammam are.
It will hardly be possible to clarify the affair anyway, now that the most important witnesses like Beckenbauer are dead. All that is clear is that Beckenbauer received the money in 2002 as a personal loan from French entrepreneur Robert Louis-Dreyfus, who has also since died. It is unclear what the millions were ultimately used for.
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However, the process could have an impact on the DFB: In 2017, the tax authorities retroactively revoked the association’s non-profit status for 2006 in the wake of the affair. The DFB therefore had to pay around 22.5 million euros in back taxes. A lawsuit by the association against this decision is suspended at the financial court in Kassel until the end of the summer fairy tale trial – and will only have a chance of success if Zwanziger, Niersbach and Schmidt are acquitted.
Almost 18 years after the World Cup in Germany, the trial surrounding the so-called summer fairy tale begins in the Frankfurt am Main regional court. The proceedings started with the reading of the indictment. Three former high-ranking officials of the German Football Association (DFB) are accused of tax evasion in a particularly serious case. The public prosecutor’s office accuses the former DFB presidents Wolfgang Niersbach and Theo Zwanziger as well as the former DFB general secretary Horst Schmidt of having arranged for false tax returns to be submitted in connection with the men’s World Cup.
