Swiss justice has failed to complete the first trial against the football authorities. Started on March 9, the proceedings were postponed due to the coronavirus and a verdict cannot be made before the limitation period on Monday April 27.
The Federal Criminal Court (TPF) announced Tuesday that it was postponing the trial against former presidents of the German Football Federation (DFB) Theo Zwanziger and Wolfgang Niersbach, former secretary general of the DFB Horst R. until April 27. Schmidt and Switzerland’s Urs Linsi, former FIFA general secretary.
The four were accused of embezzlement on the sidelines of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. They responded to fraud, or complicity in fraud in the case of Wolfgang Niersbach. The prescription being fifteen years for these crimes, the TPF would have had to render its verdict by April 27, 2020, failing which the criminal action would be extinguished.
Under the sign of the coronavirus
However, the trial opened on March 9 was suspended four days later because of the coronavirus and has not resumed since then. The proceedings against Franz Beckenbauer for the same facts had been separated due to the state of health of the former captain of the German team. It will also be prescribed on April 27.
In view of the outcome of the proceedings, the accused will be able to claim compensation for their defense costs. The TPF will still have to rule on this point
In early March, Theo Zwanziger and Horst R. Schmid had not even made the trip to Bellinzona, citing the risk of contamination by the virus. Because of their age, the four accused are among those at risk. The Court of Criminal Affairs had taken this into account when decreeing a closed session and by taking several sanitary measures.
The three Germans and the Swiss were to be explained on a payment of 6.7 million euros (10 million francs) on the sidelines of the 2006 World Cup. The former were then part of the chairmanship of the organizing committee of the event.
According to the indictment of the Public Ministry of the Confederation (MPC), they would have, with the help of Urs Linsi, camouflaged the real destination of these 6.7 million. These were intended to reimburse a loan contracted personally by Franz Beckenbauer, who assumed the honorary chairmanship of the organizing committee.
Loan and advance
The “Kaiser Franz” had obtained this amount from Robert Louis-Dreyfus who then directed Adidas. Franz Beckenbauer needed this money to convince the FIFA treasurer Mohammed Bin Hammam to grant an advance of 250 million euros for the organization of the World Cup.
Franz Beckenbauer hoped that the loan would be repaid by the DFB, but he was met with the refusal of the then president Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder. In order to obtain a green light for the payment of 6.7 million. Theo Zwanziger and Horst R. Schmidt had the idea of passing this amount off as a contribution from the DFB to the inaugural gala of the FIFA World Cup.
To this end, they would have secured the complicity of Urs Linsi. The latter allegedly collected the DFB money on a FIFA account and then transferred it to Robert Louis-Dreyfus in order to repay the loan originally taken out by Franz Beckenbauer. Wolfgang Niersbach would have been made aware of the maneuver.
Among the approximately 25 procedures opened by the MPC since 2015 on cases related to the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), around twenty are still in progress.
Thus, at the end of February, the MPC announced the indictment of the former FIFA general secretary Jérôme Valcke, the president of PSG Nasser Al-Khelaifi and a third man for corruption during the allocation of rights to retransmission. (cause SK.2019.45)
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