Germany soccer federation fined for tax evasion related to pre-2006 World Cup payment to FIFA

By Canadian Press on June 25, 2025.

BERLIN (AP) — The German soccer federation has been convicted of tax evasion related to the awarding of the World Cup hosted by the country in 2006.

A regional court in Frankfurt fined the federation, known by its German acronym DFB, 110,000 euros ($128,000) at the culmination of the nearly 16-month trial on Wednesday.

Prosecutors had been pushing for a larger fine after accusing the DFB of failing to pay approximately 2.7 million euros (now $3.1 million) in taxes related to its payment of 6.7 million euros ($7.8 million) to FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, in April 2005.

That payment settled a loan that Germany great Franz Beckenbauer, the head of the World Cup organizing committee, had accepted three years earlier from Robert Louis-Dreyfus, a former Adidas executive and then part-owner of the Infront marketing agency.

The money was channeled through a Swiss law firm to a Qatari company belonging to Mohammed Bin Hammam, then a member of FIFA’s Executive Committee. The exact purpose of the money remained unclear.

The DFB concealed the repayment of the loan as a contribution toward a planned World Cup opening gala, which was later canceled, and falsely declared it a business expense a year later.

Former DFB officials Theo Zwanziger, Wolfgang Niersbach, and Horst R. Schmidt were originally charged in the trial. The proceedings against all three, who consistently denied the allegations of tax evasion, were eventually dropped upon payment of fines.

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The Associated Press