Procedure against twenties before hiring
Surprising turn in the summer fairy tale process
Updated on March 24, 2025 – 7:29 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
In the lengthy process of the summer fairy tale affair there is a surprising turn. This means good news for a prominent defendant.
In the process of the so-called summer fairy tale, the Frankfurt Regional Court proposed a surprising decision: The procedure against former DFB President Theo Zwanziger is to be discontinued for suspected severe tax evasion.
The presiding judge Eva-Marie Distler made this proposal on the 25th day of the trial. The procedure should be terminated for a money payment of 5,000 euros to a non -profit purpose. Both the public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt and Zwanziger’s lawyer want to comment on the proposal at the next trial on April 3.
The court said that twenties “did not actively participate in the covering” of a payment by the German Football Association (DFB) in the amount of 6.7 million euros to the World Association FIFA. The booking of this sum as an operating expenditure was permitted according to the current state of knowledge. Distler said: “With Theo Zwanziger, the wrong one sits on the dock.”
According to the court, the previous findings in the procedure indicate that the payment in question was to reimburse a loan. Franz Beckenbauer received this loan over ten million Swiss francs in 2002 from the French entrepreneur Robert Louis-Dreyfus.
The money was then transferred to an account of the then FIFA Executive member Mohamed bin Hammam to Qatar in five partial amounts. In return, the 2006 World Cup organization committee received a grant of 250 million Swiss francs from FIFA to finance the World Cup in Germany.
Only twenties sits on the dock in Frankfurt/Main. Originally, former DFB President Wolfgang Niersbach and the former Secretary General Horst R. Schmidt also had to answer. The trio rejects the allegations. The proceedings against Niersbach had been discontinued against a payment of 25,000 euros to non -profit institutions. Schmidt gets a separate procedure due to health problems.
