Former DFB President Theo Zwanziger has criticized the resumption of the trial in the “Summer Fairy Tale Affair” and expects an acquittal. “The accusation is nonsensical,” the 78-year-old told the Rhein-Zeitung: “We behaved correctly, there was never a summer fairy tale scandal.”
The trial against Zwanziger as well as former DFB President Wolfgang Niersbach (72) and long-time DFB General Secretary Horst R. Schmidt (81) begins on March 4th before the Frankfurt/Main regional court. The public prosecutor’s office accuses the trio of “evasion or aiding and abetting the evasion of corporation tax, solidarity surcharge, trade tax and sales tax for the year 2006.”
The proceedings will continue after the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court overturned the district court’s dismissal decision of October 27, 2022 in May. The regional court had discontinued the proceedings with a view to the “prohibition of double jeopardy”. Criminal proceedings against Niersbach, Zwanziger and Schmidt had previously been discontinued in Switzerland due to the statute of limitations.
The investigation into the flow of money surrounding the 2006 World Cup in Germany has been dragging on for several years. Specifically, it is about 6.7 million euros that were allegedly transferred by the German World Cup organizing committee via FIFA to the former adidas boss Robert Louis-Dreyfus in 2005. Exactly this sum had obviously flowed to Qatar three years earlier in the form of advance payments from OC boss Franz Beckenbauer and Louis-Dreyfus to former FIFA official Mohamed bin Hammam.