After new investigations by the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office on charges of tax evasion in connection with the services of its long-term sponsor Adidas, the German Football Association (DFB) has caught up with its past.

In this context, the investigators have requested and received corresponding documents from the Adidas headquarters, dealing with the taxation of benefits in kind in the years 2015 to 2020.

"There was no search, the documents were given out voluntarily," said Chief Public Prosecutor Nadja Niesen of the dpa.

Michael Horeni

Football correspondent Europe in Berlin.

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The first allegations in this case became public in January 2021. According to information from the FAZ, internal reviews in the DFB should have shown in the second half of 2020 that benefits in kind may not have been correctly taxed by the association. But before the DFB itself became active, the authorities had started investigations. As a precaution, the DFB is said to have transferred a sum of allegedly around 3.3 million euros to the tax office, which, however, refrained from exemption from punishment.

This case is seen in DFB circles as the starting point of the conflict within the DFB leadership at the time between Fritz Keller, who was elected as the new President a year earlier, and the then General Secretary Friedrich Curtius and Treasurer Stephan Osnabrügge; Vice President Rainer Koch was also involved in the dispute. The differences within the DFB leadership also revolved around the question of a possible voluntary disclosure, which was apparently waived.

In January 2021, the DFB only confirmed that a newly introduced system for tax error prevention had "identified a possible source of error", whereupon the association sent a message to the responsible tax office.

After “informing the presidium”, so it was said in a statement, a “late notification on the basis of a maximum consideration to the tax office” had been made.

According to the DFB at the time, there were no indications of conduct that could be accused of criminal tax law.

Keller resigned as DFB President in spring 2021, as did General Secretary Curtius.

Osnabrügge announced that it will no longer run for office at the upcoming DFB Bundestag.

Koch and Peter Peters currently lead the DFB as interim presidents.