By Andrew Warshaw
June 28 – FIFA has lifted Franz Beckenbauer’s ban from all football-related activity for failing to assist the investigation of alleged corruption into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup votes, according to his manager.
FIFA apparently informed Beckenbauer, Germany’s most iconic football figure who was a voting member of the FIFA executive committee at the time the ballot took place in December 2010, that the ban was lifted with immediate effect, Marcus Hoefl said in a statement posted via his Twitter feed.
FIFA imposed the 90-day ban on June 13 at the request of its ethics committee whose chief prosecutor Michael Garcia has just completed his two-year probe, much of it focussing on Qatar’s landslide 2022 ballot victory and details of which are expected to be published within the next few weeks.
Beckenbauer, one of the world’s most respected football administrators following his distinguished career as a player and coach, said at the time he was surprised by the ban, and that he had received the questions only in complicated legal English.
Der Kaiser then pledged to answer the questions put to him in German and in writing, and his manager said on June 18 that the FIFA ethics committee received his answers to “all its questions.”
Friday’s statement said Beckenbauer’s management team continued to believe the ban wasn’t justified because he had no obligation to testify to FIFA, but said that with hindsight it would have been better for him to answer the questions earlier.
“I underestimated the matter,” Beckenbauer said in the statement.
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