By Andrew Warshaw
October 31 – The much-publicised slush fund allegations surrounding Germany’s hosting of the 2006 World Cup have exploded into fresh controversy amid claims that Franz Beckenbauer, who led the country’s bid, may have personally endorsed a financial inducement to Malta just weeks before its FIFA member was about to vote.
Insideworldfootball has learned that Beckenbauer, Germany’s most iconic footballing hero, may have been complicit in influencing the votes of Malta and other wavering FIFA members.
Beckenbauer has fiercely denied any knowledge of the alleged 6.7 million Euro slush fund to buy 2006 votes though he has accepted responsibility for the German Football Association’s “mistake” in making a payment of €6.7 million to FIFA towards securing a grant for staging costs.
Der Spiegel magazine earlier this month revealed details of the payment to FIFA in 2005 which the magazine claimed was in return for votes five years earlier to secure the right to stage the tournament. The German FA (DFB) has confirmed the payment was made and has launched an internal investigation. The finger has been pointed at both Beckenbauer and current DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach, the 2006 World Cup communications chief, who has been at pains to explain the nuances of the infamous payment.
It now transpires that Beckenbauer may have been party to a secret tv rights deal for Bayern Munich, where he was president at the time, to play Malta – in condition Germany landed the tournament.
The $250,000 contract with then Maltese FA president Joe Misfud was signed just a month before the July 6, 2000, vote that saw Germany edge South Africa 12-11, with the Bayern game played the following January.
Beckenbauer is understood to have been aware of the deal while Mifsud ended up voting for the Germans, disappointing the English who thought they had secured his backing but who gained just two votes after a hugely expensive campaign.
“Franz Beckenbauer was directly involved in the negotiations for the Bayern friendly,” current Maltese FA president Norman Darmanin Demajo claimed. “My understanding is that he was in Malta on the day the contract was signed with Mifsud. The Germans have always claimed they did nothing wrong. They may not have put money in envelopes but the end result was the same. The jigsaw all fits together.”
Insideworldfootball has seen a copy of the contract with the payment part scribbled in. The contract swears all parties to secrecy saying they “shall keep strictly confidential the content of this agreement and not make any disclosure thereof to any third parties. In order to secure this obligation, the parties undertake to limit knowledge of the existence and content of this agreement.”
The contract was signed by Mifsud and by CWL, a company linked to German media magnate Leo Kirch, who died four years ago. The Kirch group owned television rights to the 2006 World Cup.
Suggestions that Beckenbauer was in Malta at the time the deal was signed have been given weight by the open court testimony earlier this year of Mifsud as part of a long running legal battle with Demajo who was treasurer at the time. Mifsud told the court that Beckenbauer was “accompanying the company.”
“They had even proposed that in January, when they would be on break, they would
come to Malta, play a game, and sell the rights for that match, and give the money to us,” Mifsud told the court, according to the English translation. “And so the date of that contract that they claim was handwritten, if I am not mistaken, was either on that date or on the eve of the match when Malta played against England.” The irony will not be lost on the English that around the date they were playing in Malta the allegation is that the Maltese vote was being secured for Germany.
Former German international Gunter Netzer, who helped conduct the negotiations for CWL, said at the time that the transactions were “entirely normal” and stressed that no money had been paid to individual FIFA voting members. But there are questions over why the contract signed by Mifsud only came to light several months after it was signed.
When Demajo raised questions about the secret deal, he claims he was forced out of office and exiled for a decade before staging a comeback by ousting Mifsud. “Things were happening that didn’t make sense to me,” Demajo told Insideworldfootball.
One of those was why the money was allegedly paid at first into a trust fund accessed only by Mifsud. “Give me one logical reason why Beckenbauer would have flown to Malta, had a meeting with Mifsud and then a secret contract is drawn up so that Bayern plays here,” Demajo said. “And give me one good reason why Bayern should want to come to Malta, pay all the expenses and give us a quarter of a million and then leave. That’s an insult to my intelligence.”
“Four months after the Bayern Munich contract was signed, I was informed that $250,000 had fallen from the sky into our association’s bank account. As Treasurer, I questioned why, and discovered that Mifsud had signed the CWL-Bayern agreement on his own and without anyone’s knowledge, something that he was statutorily not allowed to do. Also, the amount payable was barely decipherable. It was a secret contract signed by Joe Mifsud alone, in his own name, and to me it was not acceptable.”
Asked for comment, Beckenbauer’s office has yet to respond but contacted by Insideworldfootball, Mifsud categorically refused to speak on the matter. “I have been out of football for many years now and am not prepared to make any comment on this – either to you or anyone else”, he said.
While the latest revelations do not in any way prove vote-buying or any illegal activity, they could at best be construed as casting an even darker shadow over Germany’s tactics in securing their narrow 12-11 ballot victory over South Africa. Although almost certainly not related, FIFA ethics officials recently confirmed for the first time that Beckenbauer, Germany’s most revered footballer, is among those it has been investigating.
The investigation had already been widely reported after Beckenbauer refused to cooperate with the former FIFA investigator Michael Garcia inquiry into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. At one point Beckenbauer was briefly suspended until he provided answers to Garcia’s team.
More recently, however, he has come under pressure following the bombshell slush fund allegations in Germany that have also been fiercely denied by Niersbach, Germany’s FIFA exco member, though his predecessor Theo Zwanziger has gone on record by as saying believes the fund existed.
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