He said “the raids are linked to the awarding of the football World Cup 2006 and the transfer of 6.7 million euros to Fifa”.
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The raid follows a report which claims that a secret fund of 6.7 million Euros was set up in order to buy votes to enable Germany to stage the 2006 World Cup.
Zwanziger claims it was Netzer who first told him that the votes of four Asian representatives on the Federation Internationale de Football Association executive committee were bought, which Netzer denies.
Former German Football Association president Theo Zwanziger said he had nothing to fear. “But it is better this way than through a few kind of investigation committees by people who are involved”. Niersbach has said that the original payment from Louis-Dreyfus wasn’t made until 2002, long after Germany had been awarded the World Cup.
“The DFB announces complete cooperation with the investigators, to clarify the accusations”.
Zwanziger was then DFB chief and also Franz Beckenbauer’s deputy on the 2006 World Cup’s organising committee.
“We are in search of bothersome material which supports the suspicion of tax evasion”, an investigator told the newspaper Bild.
The DFB denied the claims last month, reported in Der Spiegel news weekly. He is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday morning in Brooklyn federal court, where he is expected to plead not guilty to corruption charges.
Meanwhile, human rights organisations announced they had formally submitted evidence to Fifa’s ethics committee and ad-hoc electoral committee alleging the favourite to succeed Sepp Blatter as president was complicit in a crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners in Bahrain.
German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Saturday called on the country’s soccer federation “to initiate investigations and clarify the outstanding issues now as soon as possible”. “I actually expected them to show up earlier”, he said.
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The homes of top officials were also searched.
