By Andrew Warshaw
November 11 – Pressure is growing on Franz Beckenbauer, Germany’s most iconic footballing figure, to speak out on the latest corruption allegations surrounding his country’s winning 2006 World Cup bid.
Twenty-four hours after the resignation of DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach over the 6.7m Euro slush fund claims first laid bare by Der Spiegel magazine, the focus of attention has now shifted to Beckenbauer, who captained and coached Germany to separate World Cup titles and was head of the country’s 2006 World Cup organising committee.
Already alleged to have been complicit in influencing a number of voting Fifa members by endorsing friendly fixtures played by Bayern Munich, Beckenbauer, who has been largely untouchable in recent weeks, has now been linked to disgraced former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner.
The DFB have confirmed that Beckenbauer was behind an agreement drawn up with Warner just days before the vote in July, 2000. According to two German newspapers, his signature was on a draft contract also initialled by his right-hand man, Fedor Radmann. The contract reportedly promised Warner, then president of Concacaf, “various services” including friendly matches and tickets.
Apparently the letter was never sent but the signatures of Beckenbauer and Radmann have heightened suspicion about the motives. They also serve to cement claims that Bayern Munich, of which Beckenbauer was then president, were contracted to play friendly matches against countries that had Fifa members in return for tv rights, a deal negotiated by Swiss agency, CWL, owned by the Kirch media giant, and exposed last week by this website.
Rainer Koch, who along with fellow DFB vice president Reinhard Rauball has taken over Niersbach’s position on an interim basis, said it is “high time” Beckenbauer helped resolve the issue.
“We have a request that he becomes more intensively involved in clearing up the processes,” Koch in an interview with German channel ZDF. “The question how the World Cup was awarded will keep us busy.
“That is a big request, from the entire leadership of the DFB, (for him) to answer these questions. We clearly have more to clear up than just the 6.7 million euros. We have come to the conclusion that several processes around the awarding of the 2006 World Cup should be looked at closely. We appeal to him to bring himself more closely into the explanation of what happened.”
With regard to the 6.7m Euros, Beckenbauer has admitted to facilitating the payment from the German FA to Fifa which Der Spiegel claims was a return on a loan from Louis-Dreyfus to help buy votes for Germany’s World Cup bid at the ballot in 2000. Beckenbauer has admitted that, in hindsight, the payment was a “mistake” but insists claims of a votes-for-cash deal are totally untrue.
Niersbach, along with two other former World Cup organising committee colleagues, is under investigation for tax evasion related to the payment after police raided the DFB and his home last week.
Beckenbauer was not suspected of tax evasion and was not part of the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office probe, officials have said. “But he needs to answer questions,” said German MP Oezcan Mutlu, who is a member of the parliamentary committee on sport. “It’s not just about the cash. It about many other questions … and he needs to provide answers. As it stands now, the suspicions keep growing and growing.”
Warner, once among the most powerful figures in world football, was recently been banned for life by football’s world governing body and is among those named in the US Justice Department’s probe into widespread fraud and money-laundering . “This has to be evaluated in such a way that these questions (of bribery) are at least considered,” Rauball told Sky TV. “If something has been put in writing, regardless of whether it happened or not, then it is something that permits conjecture.”
Meanwhile, eyebrows seem certain to be raised at Niersbach’s decision to remain on the Fifa executive committee – and one assumes that of Uefa too – despite resigning as head of the German FA. “We can confirm that Mr. Niersbach has informed FIFA that he will remain in his functions as a member of the FIFA executive Committee,” FIFA said.
Niersbach is one of eight European representatives on the exco, all of whom are elected via UEFA which seems likely to discuss the situation at their next exco meeting on Dec 11 in Paris even though under the rules Niersbach could not be replaced until the Uefa Congress next March in Budapest.