Court schedules 16 trial days for summer fairytale affair
16 trial days have been scheduled for the proceedings against former leading DFB officials before the Frankfurt Regional Court in connection with the summer fairytale affair. This is according to a press release from the authorities.
The former presidents of the German Football Association, Wolfgang Niersbach and Theo Zwanziger, as well as the former General Secretary Horst R. Schmidt are accused of tax evasion.
As previously announced, the trial will begin on March 4 next year. The last day of the trial would be July 11. This means that the proceedings will take place in the middle of the home European Championship (June 14 to July 14).
Poor handling of the events so far
In May, the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court restarted the proceedings against the trio, which had previously been discontinued by the regional court at the end of October 2022. At the time, the Higher Regional Court announced that the regional court's discontinuation order had been revoked and the proceedings were to be continued.
This means that, as things stand at present, the so far poor investigation into the events surrounding the 2006 World Cup in Germany will now be brought before a German court after all. Zwanziger, Niersbach and Schmidt have always rejected all accusations.
The regional court discontinued the proceedings on October 27 last year due to the prohibition of double jeopardy, after proceedings in Switzerland had previously been discontinued due to the statute of limitations.
At the heart of the case was a payment of 6.7 million euros made by the DFB via the world association FIFA to the now deceased entrepreneur Robert Louis-Dreyfus. The money was declared as a contribution to a gala for the 2006 World Cup, which never took place. In 2002, Franz Beckenbauer had received a loan of the same amount from Louis-Dreyfus in his function as head of World Cup organization, which ultimately disappeared into the accounts of the former FIFA financial functionary Mohamed bin Hammam.
Source: www.dpa.com
