Suspicion of tax evasion: Proceedings on the "summer fairy tale affair" continue surprisingly

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The Presidium of the Organising Committee for the 2006 World Cup a good six months before its start: 1st Vice-President Horst R. Schmidt, Vice-President Theo Zwanziger, President Franz Beckenbauer and Vice-President Wolfgang Niersbach

Photograph:

Kunz / dpa

The reappraisal of the "summer fairy tale affair" has taken a surprising turn: The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court reopened the proceedings against former DFB officials Horst R. Schmidt, Theo Zwanziger and Wolfgang Niersbach, which had been discontinued by the Frankfurt Regional Court at the end of October 2022, on suspicion of tax evasion. A discontinuation order of the Regional Court of 27 October 2022 was thus annulled.

This means that the hitherto poor reappraisal of the events surrounding the 2006 World Cup is likely to lead to a legal aftermath before a German court. The public prosecutor's office accuses the three defendants of evasion or aiding and abetting the evasion of corporate income tax, solidarity surcharge, trade tax and sales tax for the year 2006.

The trio is said to have caused or contributed to the fact that the repayment of a loan in the amount of 6.7 million euros to the world association Fifa "was wrongly offset as an operating expense of the DFB in 2006 to reduce income and tax," according to the announcement of the Higher Regional Court on Monday.

Ex-DFB President Zwanziger reacted calmly to this decision. "For almost four years, the indictment has been shifted back and forth between the courts to the detriment of those affected. You can only shake your head about that," the 77-year-old told the dpa news agency.

Proceedings discontinued after one was discontinued in Switzerland – due to statute of limitations

The Regional Court had discontinued the proceedings on 27 October last year due to the prohibition of double jeopardy, after proceedings in Switzerland against the accused for fraud or aiding and abetting fraud had been discontinued due to the statute of limitations. The Regional Court justified this by stating that the offences charged were the same offence within the meaning of Article 54 of the Schengen Convention.

The OLG does not share this view. It is not a complex of "inextricably linked facts", even if both charges are linked to a coherent historical complex.

The investigation into the cash flows in the "Summer Fairy Tale Affair" has been dragging on for several years. Specifically, it is about 6.7 million euros, which were transferred in 2005 by the German World Cup organizing committee via Fifa allegedly to the former Adidas boss Robert Louis-Dreyfus. Three years earlier, exactly this sum had apparently flowed to Qatar in the form of advance payments from OC boss Franz Beckenbauer and Louis-Dreyfus to former FIFA official Mohamed bin Hammam.

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