Agency Report –
Oslo – The German Football Federation (DFB) is taking legal action against its former president Theo Zwanziger over a dispute of €24 million ($24.9 million), Zwanziger told dpa on Wednesday.
The federation has filed a claim for damages with the Frankfurt regional court for the amount.
The proceedings centre around the financial losses that the DFB has incurred or could still incur as a result of the tax evasion trial in connection with the 2006 World Cup.
The trial against former DFB presidents Wolfgang Niersbach and Zwanziger, as well as ex-DFB general secretary Horst R Schmidt has been underway at the Frankfurt regional court for almost 11 months.
The case centre around a payment of €6.7 million in 2005 from the DFB via the world governing body FIFA to the late businessman Robert Louis-Dreyfus, and thereby evaded taxes amounting to more than €13 million.
The money was declared as operating expenses, a payment for a World Cup gala which never took place.
World Cup chief organizer and 1974 World Cup winner Franz Beckenbauer, who died in January 2024, had received a loan of the same sum from Louis-Dreyfus in 2002, with that money ending up in an account owned by now disgraced former top FIFA official Mohammed bin Hammam of Qatar. It remains unclear what the money was for.
The DFB had already filed claims for damages against the three former top officials in 2017. They subsequently submitted waivers every year – but no longer for 2025.
Since the criminal proceedings against Niersbach were discontinued in exchange for a payment of pays €25,000 to a charity and the proceedings against Schmidt were severed for health reasons, only Zwanziger remains in the dock.
The DFB refused to make comments, referring to the ongoing proceedings.
Zwanziger’s lawyer Hans-Jörg Metz told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper: “We have been in talks with the DFB for years in order to reach a uniform assessment of the liability issue, not least on the basis of the opinions from experts commissioned by the DFB itself, which have been very critical of the liability issue.
“Unfortunately, the DFB did not have the courage to make its own assessment, so that now the court (…) must decide in due course after evaluating all aspects.”
By Eric Dobias
