German justice on Wednesday raided the premises of the German Football Federation (DFB) as well as the homes of several "current and former officials" as part of an investigation for tax evasion, announced the Frankfurt prosecution.
Six former and current officials are targeted by the investigation for "tax evasion in particularly serious cases".
Their names have not been made public.
They are accused of having "knowingly misrepresented" to the tax authorities advertising revenue for the years 2014 and 2015 to prevent the DFB from paying nearly 4.7 million euros in taxes, according to a press release.
More than 200 investigators mobilized
At that time, the president of the Federation was Wolfgang Niersbach, who resigned in 2015 because of the scandal of the "summer fairy tale", - the name given by the Germans to the 2006 World Cup - carried away corruption scandal around the award to Germany of the famous football tournament.
It would not have been searched according to the Spiegel.
The current president of the DFB, Fritz Keller, for his part announced that he wanted to “fully support” the investigation, as reported by the newspaper Spiegel.
"I am in favor of education in order to have a clean future for football," the 63-year-old said at the federal press conference in Berlin.
More than 200 investigators were mobilized for the search, which also targeted several private homes, in the regions of Hesse, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate.
