Summer fairy tale process
Zwanziger’s lawyer sees the witness statement as exoneration
May 7, 2024, 12:31 p.m
Tax evasion amounting to millions – that is the accusation against ex-DFB officials. The 2006 Summer Fairy Tale World Cup is being tried in court. But the lawyer for ex-DFB President Zwanziger now sees the core requirement as no longer met due to a witness statement.
The legal counsel for former DFB President Theo Zwanziger, who was accused of tax evasion, has assessed a witness statement from the responsible tax investigator Lutz Frank in the Summer Fairy Tale trial before the Frankfurt Regional Court as exonerating his client. In Hans-Jörg Metz’s opinion, the statement “obviated the core requirement for alleged tax evasion,” Zwanziger’s lawyer said in a letter.
In the trial, Zwanziger and former DFB top officials Wolfgang Niersbach and Horst R. Schmidt have to answer for allegations of tax evasion in a particularly serious case. They are said to have unlawfully declared a payment of 6.7 million euros made to the world association FIFA in April 2005 as a business expense in the tax return for 2006, thereby reducing the tax for the World Cup year by around 13.7 million euros. All three defendants strictly deny the accusation.
Frank explained on Monday that the adjustment booking made by the German Football Association in 2006 had zero effect on profits. This would mean that there is no tax evasion in the case. However, the tax investigator from the Frankfurt tax office qualified his statement by saying that, in his opinion, this booking was incorrect. It remains to be seen how the court chaired by Eva-Maria Distler will ultimately assess the process.
Who is responsible for incorrect booking?
Frank also stated that there was no evidence that Zwanziger, Niersbach and Schmidt directly ordered the 6.7 million euro payment, which Metz also viewed as exonerating the three defendants. “The further continuation of the process will have to be measured against these core statements,” he said.
Frank, on the other hand, assumes that the former DFB officials are still responsible for the incorrect booking of the 6.7 million euros because they stated “subsidy for the FIFA gala” as the purpose of the payment. This was an incorrect situation that the DFB tax advisor responsible at the time could not have known about. According to current knowledge, the money was used to pay off a personal loan from Franz Beckenbauer, which he had received from French entrepreneur Robert Louis-Dreyfus in 2002.