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The former DFB General Secretary Horst R. Schmidt has now officially corrected earlier statements in the affair for the World Cup Summer Fairy Tale 2006. He relieved ex-union leader Theo Zwanziger from charges of deliberate misrepresentation in the course of the dubious payment of 6.7 million euros to the World Football Association Fifa. This is proven by documents available to the German Press Agency. Schmidt had rejected the allegations against the SPIEGEL months ago as "devious".
In July 2016, this had changed the course. At that time, Schmidt, one of the most important decision-makers of the World Cup Organizing Committee and a confidant of Zwanzigers, had admitted to the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt a certain knowledge. Schmidt had said that Zwanziger and he had known that the alleged participation in a Fifa gala in the context of the World Cup was a legend of the actual payment purpose. He also stated that he and Zwanziger had misled the members of the OC Presidium or Presidential Committee of the OK Supervisory Board over the actual reason for payment.
Among other things, the prosecution based this statement on their charges of tax evasion or aiding and abetting tax evasion, for which Zwanziger and Schmidt, as well as ex-DFB President Wolfgang Niersbach and former FIFA Secretary General Urs Linsi, will shortly be answerable to the Frankfurt Regional Court. All defendants reject the allegations.
Why Schmidt initially made a damning statement is not answered. It is questionable whether Schmidt's about-turn corresponds to the truth or whether it is merely a protective claim in order to avoid a possible conviction. Ultimately, the question arises as to why Schmidt and Zwanziger met in 2003 with Robert-Louis Dreyfus, if there was no connection between the 6.7 million payment and the former Adidas boss.
"There can be no question of a bogus business"
Schmidt insists on the following point of view: The sum that was paid to Fifa in 2005 was solely intended to finance the gala, which was officially canceled in January 2006. The payment had nothing to do with the repayment of a ten-million Swiss franc loan borrowed from Dreyfus three years earlier. Schmidt had already recorded this in a memo in April 2017.
Schmidt, Zwanziger, Niersbach and Linsi are also in trouble in Switzerland. The quartet has been charged with suspicion of fraud by the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office. Schmidt's lawyer Nathan Landshut, who has been commissioned by the Swiss criminal procedure, has already corrected his client's statements to the local court in mid-September.
In his letter Landshut said: "The OK World Cup 2006 has always been about the support of the opening gala and nothing else, about a fictitious business (simulation) or an actual legend (this language was spoken by my clients from the prosecutor in Germany in reality Horst Schmidt never used this expression!) there can be no question. "
- Read here the entire history of the possible statute of limitations in Switzerland.
In the Swiss procedure, the time is playing for the defendants. A possible statute of limitations would come in the coming April, because of the new statement may be necessary new investigations. Beckenbauer, who is regarded as a decisive figure in Switzerland in the case and whose procedure was separated, has been declared incapacitated by his doctors. The statute of limitations Beckenbauer's indictment is considered likely.
