Off the wire
• Mozambique to talk with Malaysian team over plane debris probe  • Sanchez fails in second bid to become Spain's prime minister  • Lavrov, Kerry call for quick resumption of intra-Syrian talks  • Urgent: Oil prices gain amid upbeat job data  • Urgent: U.S. dollar declines on mixed jobs data  • 1st LD Writethru: Gold up on weaker U.S. dollar  • Los Angeles police investigating knife found on property owned by Simpson  • Levir Culpi to be new Fluminense coach  • Roundup: Greek political leaders seek common ground on refugee crisis, as 30,000 people stranded in Greece  • Spotlight: EU's Tusk shuttles to find way to tackle refugee crisis  
You are here: 　 Home

German FA and law-office present report on World Cup vote buying

Xinhua, March 5, 2016 Adjust font size:

The German Football Association (DFB) and the law office Freshfields presented the results of the internal investigation regarding the German World Cup bid, in an official press conference in Frankfurt on Friday.

The report by the law office Freshfields, which has been instructed with the internal investigations by the DFB, found no evidence of vote buying in the awarding of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany.

"We found no evidence of vote buying but we also cannot rule it out completely," Freshfields' lawyer Christian Duve said.

The DFB commissioned the internal investigations by the law office, after the German magazine Der Spiegel raised allegations of bribery in the light of the 2006 World Cup awarding in October 2015.

According to the Freshfields' report, the suspect payment of 6.7 million Euros by the DFB to the FIFA, in April 2005, has not been used for it's intended purpose, an opening ceremony, but instead immediately redirected to former Adidas chief Robert Louis-Dreyfus, who died in 2009.

The report revealed, that the 6.7 million Euros were transferred from the DFB to the FIFA. The FIFA redirected the payment to Louis-Dreyfus' bank account. The former Adidas chief remitted to money to a Swiss bank account before the money was forwarded to Mohammed bin Hammam's company Kemco in Qatar. "The money landed somewhere in Qatar and is now under influence of Bin Hammam," Duve said.

The former FIFA official Mohammed bin Hammam, who has been banned for life from football, denied any payments though, the report said.

The Freshfields' report revealed also, that former DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach, who resigned in the light of the scandal in October 2015, knew about the suspect payment already in June 2015 but denied to inform the DFB's advisory board.

The 42 Freshfields' lawyers, who were involved in the investigation, winnowed 740 filing folders and 128,000 emails as well as electronic devices. They held, in addition, 26 interviews with witnesses. However, the lawyers faced a number of obstacles during their investigation due to missing files, data or witnesses, who already deceased or denied interviews. "We couldn't speak to all those we wanted to talk."

The Freshfields investigation cost the German Football Association more than 1 million Euros. It is not yet unknown whether there will be follow-up investigations. Endit