A statement released by the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland on Thursday said it had opened investigative proceedings against four members of the executive board of the organizing committee for the 2006 World Cup, which was hosted by Germany.
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Beckenbauer, 70, is under investigation with three other members of the 2006 World Cup organising committee – Hans-Rudolf Schmidt, Theo Zwanziger and Wolfgang Niersbach – said the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland in Bern.
The Swiss said they worked closely with Austrian and German authorities to carry out the searches for evidence and question suspects.
Alongside Beckenbauer, who was head of the organising committee for Germany’s successful bid, the attorney general’s office said it was investigating Horst Schmidt, the committee’s vice president; Theo Zwanziger, a former president of the DFB and former member of the governing council of Federation Internationale de Football Association, soccer’s global governing body; and Wolfgang Niersbach, a current member of FIFA’s ruling council. His term on FIFA’s ruling council runs until 2019, but in July FIFA’s ethics committee banned him from soccer for a year for failing to report findings of unethical conduct and possible conflicts of interest in relation to the 2006 bid. It is worth noting that Beckenbauer was the president of that organising committee.
Swiss authorities said they “suspected that the suspects willfully misled their fellow members of the executive board of the organising committee for the 2006 World Cup”.
“This was presumably done by the use of false pretenses or concealment of the truth, thus inducing the other committee members to act in a manner that caused DFB a financial loss”.
According to the paper, for whom Beckenbauer writes a regular column, the home of Urs Linsi, the former General Secretary of world football’s governing body FIFA, was also searched.
The court in Bern on Thursday announced that prosecutors have been investigating the four Germans since November past year, the month after German magazine Der Spiegel first broke the cash-for-votes scandal.
The 2006 World Cup vote ended 12-11 in favour of Germany over South Africa, who were to instead host the following tournament in 2010.
The money allegedly came from the late Robert Louis-Dreyfus, ex-boss of Adidas, at Beckenbauer’s request, and was handed over in 2000, just before Germany were awarded the 2006 finals by a narrow vote.
It said the payment by the German federation to Fifa on April 27, 2005, was “falsely declared” by the World Cup organising committee for an opening gala, but was intended for Louis-Dreyfus.
Beckenbauer has previously denied any wrongdoing regarding accusations of bribery and irregular payments of several million dollars linked to Federation Internationale de Football Association. As for the allegations, the Swiss prosecutors wouldn’t go in to great detail, only to say that it had to do with misleading organizers.
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They have already placed Blatter under criminal investigation for two separate acts of suspected financial mismanagement. He has been under investigation by FIFA’s ethics committee (still an oxymoron, right?) since earlier this year as well.
