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Wednesday, October 07, 2020
On suspicion of tax evasion in particularly serious cases, the Frankfurt / Main prosecutor’s office searches the premises of the German Football Association. The private apartments of DFB officials are also being felted. 200 officers are on duty.
Due to the suspicion of tax evasion in particularly serious cases, the Frankfurt / Main public prosecutor’s office searched on Wednesday the business premises of the German Football Association (DFB) and the private homes of those responsible for the DFB. A total of 200 officials participated in the measures in Hesse, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate, according to the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office. This is revenue from perimeter advertising from home football matches of the national football team in 2014 and 2015.
The Prosecutor’s Office accuses six former and current DFB officials of having “deliberately and incorrectly declared income as income from asset management, so that the DFB avoided a taxation of around 4.7 million euros.”
“Tax advantage of great magnitude”
In December 2013, the DFB leased the rights to assign the advertising space at the venues of the international matches of the national soccer team for the period 2014 to 2018 to the Swiss sports marketer Infront. However, this company should have no leeway in selecting advertising partners. Rather, she is said to have undertaken to take into account the exclusivity of the general sponsor and general point guard of the national team and not to grant any rights to her competitors. Instead, despite the leasing of the rights, the DFB is said to have been actively involved in the allocation of the perimeter ad space through its sponsorship contracts.
“The consequence of the tax law of this is that the income from the lease will not be used for the management of tax-free assets, but for taxable business operations and, therefore, would have been taxed,” the Public Ministry statement said. According to the investigations carried out so far, it is suspected “that the defendant was aware of this tax inaccuracy, but consciously chose it so that the DFB would benefit from a great tax advantage.”
“Clear irregularities”
Due to the association between the DFB and Infront, there had been several problems. Infront is said to have bribed DFB employees to get the deal. There is talk of jobs for relatives and luxury watches. “Spiegel” reported on the dubious collaboration in June. Immediately afterwards, the cooperation with Infront by the DFB ended with immediate effect. The reason given by the DFB was “clear irregularities in relation to the creation and provision of contractual services by Infront and the illegal influence on the DFB representatives.”
The association had already received indications of possible harmful actions by the Infront company against the DFB in May 2019, he said. Studies by the consulting firm Esecon have confirmed this. Indeed, the Berlin consultancy’s research report casts a bad light on the association.
According to this, the DFB is said to have commissioned Infront in 2013 to hire perimeter advertising partners, although another company offered a larger sum for the lucrative deal. The then DFB management is said to have received consideration for the deal. The “Spiegel” reported on this last week. In the month of the tender, the son of then-DFB Secretary General Helmut Sandrock is said to have landed a job at Infront.
