German FA “annoyed” by World Cup investigation

BERLIN: The German Football Association (DFB) will not bring forward publication of the results of an investigation into the bid process for the 2006 World Cup despite the “annoying” leak of some details to a newspaper, it said on Tuesday.

“The DFB has noted with great surprise that confidential interview transcripts have appeared in the media,” it said in a statement.

“For clarification: neither the executive board nor the whole DFB board had access to the notes of the (investigating) law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer at any time.

“It remains the case that despite these extremely annoying indiscretions that Freshfields will publish the complete results once the investigations have been completed.” The results are not expected before February as the DFB looks into allegations a slush fund was used to buy votes to secure the right to host the 2006 World Cup in the country.

The Bild newspaper on Tuesday had quoted from interviews carried out in the investigation, including from the testimony of former DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach.

German tax authorities are looking into a payment of 6.7 million (7.4 million dollars) euros made in 2005 to the football ruling body Fifa which was declared as money for a cultural event around the 2006 home World Cup which never took place.

The money was rather, via Fifa, for former Adidas chief executive Robert Louis-Dreyfus who had forwarded the sum on behalf of the World Cup organising committee to Fifa several years earlier.

Bild quoted Niersbach and former DFB secretary general Horst R Schmidt as saying that German football legend Franz Beckenbauer, who headed the World Cup organising committee, had claimed Fifa president Joseph Blatter “had been elected with my money” after winning the presidential election in 2002. — dpa