The German Football Federation (DFB) insisted on Friday that a €6.7 million ($7.6 million) payment made by the 2006 World Cup organisers to FIFA had nothing to do with the awarding of the event to Germany.
The payment was unearthed by the DFB during an internal investigation into the awarding of the 2006 World Cup prompted by the wave of scandal engulfing FIFA.
However, that assertion was contradicted by German weekly newspaper Spiegel, which claimed the money was a slush fund used to buy votes.
The DFB explained that in the course of their probe to ensure nothing amiss had occurred during the bidding process “it had come across a 6.7 million euros payment made to FIFA in April 2005, money which could have been used for something else other than its original intended target (FIFA’s cultural programme).”
The DFB stressed: “The payment was not connected with the awarding (of the 2006 World Cup) made almost five years earlier.”
However, according to Spiegel, the bid committee had accepted a 10.3 million Swiss francs ($10.3 million) loan from the then CEO of German sportswear giant Adidas, Robert Louis-Dreyfus, who died in 2009.
Spiegel claims the loan was used to buy the votes of four Asian members of FIFA’s 24-strong executive committee.
At the vote in July 2000 Germany saw off South Africa by 12 votes to 11 – Charles Dempsey of New Zealand abstained – to win the right to hold the 2006 World Cup, with South Africa going on to stage the 2010 edition.
Two of the four Asians refused to answer Spiegel’s questions, one is now deceased while the fourth, South Korean Chung Moon-joon, who eight days ago was suspended for six years by FIFA’s ethics committee for contravening rules while lobbying for his homeland’s bid to host the 2022 World Cup, deemed the issue not important enough to answer.
Spiegel further claimed that a year before the World Cup began in Germany, Louis-Dreyfus, who was once the major shareholder in French giants Marseille, had wanted to recoup his loan.
The DFB therefore used a FIFA account in Geneva to transfer the 6.7 million euros sum to Louis-Dreyfus, according to Spiegel.
The newspaper also claims that the World Cup organising committee chairman Franz Beckenbauer, a German football legend, and current DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach, who was then the secretary general of that organisation, were both aware of the payment.
The DFB, however, said they had found no “irregularities” in Germany’s winning bid to stage the football showpiece.
The DFB also said it is investigating the possibility of recuperating the 6.7 million euros.
