By Andrew Warshaw
April 28 – Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber is facing calls for his resignation amidst accusations that the entire Swiss criminal justice system has been undermined over the botched 2006 World Cup tax fraud investigation. The case briefly came to trial following a five-year investigation but has now controversially collapsed.
Lauber, already under suspicion over undocumented dealings with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, is under increased pressure after the five-year statute of limitations to secure convictions for three of Germany’s most powerful former officials expired on Monday, meaning there will be no judgement which will only serve only to increase suspicions over whether Germany was guilty of vote-rigging in the 2006 bid process.
Prosecutors alleged that one-time German Football Association (DFB) leaders Theo Zwanziger, Wolfgang Niersbach and Horst Schmidt plus former FIFA number two Urs Linsi misled the DFB about the destination of a CHF10 million (€6.7 million payment). Germany’s 2006 bid committee chief Franz Beckenbauer, who has been entangled in the case from the start, was not charged because of ill- health.
The money in question was said at the time to have been the return of a loan via FIFA from the late Adidas chief executive Robert Louis-Dreyfus. But investigators noted the DFB had earmarked the payment as a contribution to a World Cup gala event which never actually took place.
Allegations have long persisted that the money was instead used for a secret slush fund to buy votes. Germany ended up controversially edging out South Africa by a single vote to win 12-11 and the right to stage the tournament dubbed the “summer fairy tale” by organisers.
Swiss prosecutors specifically wanted to know how and why the same figure of €6.7 million ended up being transferred three years earlier to a company controlled by disgraced former Asian football supremo Mohamed Bin Hammam.
The four defendants were all indicted last summer by Swiss prosecutors for allegedly fraudulently misleading the DFB. All of them denied any wrongdoing and Lauber has defended the Office of the Attorney General’s (OAG) handling of the case.
However, after the trial briefly opened in Bellinzona last month, it was suspended by Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court citing government instructions for people older than 65 to avoid contact following the coronavirus outbreak.
Linsi, who is Swiss, was the only one to come to court when the trial opened while Niersbach made the decision to appear 48 hours later. The others were warned they could be tried in absentia but now the entire process has caved in after Monday’s statute of limitations ruling.
The attorney general’s office said it “regrets that no judicial assessment could be made” in the case even though it stressed the trial had not officially ended.
Zwanziger, Niersbach and Schmidt still have to face charges in their native Germany on suspicion of tax evasion but authorities in Frankfurt were reportedly waiting for the outcome of the Swiss proceedings amid complex questions over whether defendants can be tried twice for a similar offence – even across borders.
Mark Pieth, Switzerland’s renowned anti-corruption campaigner who for years held FIFA to account over its reform process and is a former chairman of the Independent Governance Committee, slammed the entire Swiss judicial process.
Writing in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper, Pieth described the outcome as a setback for the criminal justice system which, he said, “could damage Switzerland’s reputation”.
He said Lauber, re-elected last September, no longer had any credibility given the double whammy of the Bellinzona case and those undocumented meetings with Infantino.
“It is simply impossible for him to sit out the remainder of his term of office,” Pieth said.
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