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- The Frankfurt am Main prosecutor’s office searched the facilities of the German Football Association (DFB) on suspicion of tax evasion in particularly serious cases.
- In addition to business premises, the private apartments of DFB officials were also searched.
- A total of about 200 officials participated in the measures in Hesse, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate.
The investigation concerns the revenue from perimeter advertising of international home matches of the German soccer team in 2014 and 2015. “The investigations, which are suspected of fraudulent business and commercial tax evasion in particularly serious cases, are directed against six former or current Head of the DFB “, announced the prosecutor.
“He is accused of deliberately and incorrectly reporting revenue from perimeter advertising from home football matches of the national football team in 2014 and 2015 as revenue from asset management.” With this, the DFB got rid of taxes of around 4.7 million euros.
Suspicion: the accused knew of inaccuracy
Authorities did not name the suspects. At the time, the president of the world’s largest sports association was Wolfgang Niersbach, who later resigned due to the “summer fairy tale” scandal surrounding the 2006 World Cup, which was not yet entirely clear.
Wolfgang Niersbach was president of the DFB from March 2012 to November 2015.
Keystone
“Based on previous investigations, there is a suspicion that the defendants were aware of this fiscal inaccuracy, but were consciously chosen to give the DFB a large fiscal advantage,” Chief Prosecutor Nadja Niesen said in the press release.
