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A regional court in Frankfurt has fined the German Football Association (DFB) €130,000 (£110,000) following a tax evasion case involving suspicious payments connected to the 2006 FIFA World Cup hosted in Germany.
The case centred around a €6.7 million payment, which the DFB had recorded in its financial accounts as costs for a World Cup gala event that ultimately never took place.
However, the court concluded that the funds were instead used by Franz Beckenbauer, the late president of the 2006 World Cup organising committee and German football icon, to bribe members of FIFA’s finance committee. The bribes were reportedly aimed at securing a €170 million grant from FIFA for the tournament.
The money was channelled from the organising committee through FIFA to Robert Louis-Dreyfus, former chief executive of Adidas.
Louis-Dreyfus had allegedly paid the same amount to members of FIFA’s finance committee three years earlier. The committee was led at the time by Qatari official Mohamed bin Hammam.
Judge Eva-Marie Distler remarked that DFB officials had “handled undeclared payments and supported FIFA’s corrupt system.”
Three former senior figures at the DFB—Horst Schmidt and ex-presidents Wolfgang Niersbach and Theo Zwanziger—were implicated, but criminal proceedings against them were dropped after they agreed to pay fines ranging between €10,000 and €65,000.
Beckenbauer, a central figure in the scandal, died in 2023 before legal proceedings commenced.
