By Andrew Warshaw
October 24 – A Swiss banker has been arrested for his alleged involvement in the €28.5 million tax evasion case that sent former Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness, one of Germany’s most venerated footballing figures, to jail.
Hoeness was given a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence in March when a court found he had used an account at Swiss bank Vontobel for currency transactions.
Now one of the bank’s employees has been arrested in connection with the fraud.
The man, who has not been named, was reportedly detained in the Polish capital of Warsaw on Wednesday on suspicion of facilitating tax evasion, released on bail the following day but told not to leave Poland and ordered to relinquish his passport.
Vontobel confirmed the arrest but declined to comment further according to the Swiss News Agency. An arrest warrant had apparently been issued for the man who was allegedly responsible for Hoeness’s accounts since the 1990s. According to the Swiss finance news platform Inside Paradeplatz, no charges were brought against him during Hoeness’s trial. However, the work done for Hoeness led to German authorities to bring a case against him.
The fall from grace of Hoeness, who described his behaviour as “the biggest mistake of my life”, was the stuff of legend. As president and chairman of Bayern Munich, he turned the club into one of the world’s most successful football dynasties.
He resigned after what was one of the most spectacular tax evasion cases in post-war Germany that shocked the nation and prompted scores of other tax dodgers to turn themselves in.
Prosecutors originally charged the former German World Cup star with dodging €3.5 million in taxes. But on the first day of his trial Hoeness stunned the court by admitting he had actually evaded five times that amount – €18.5 million.
That figure was raised even further to €27.2 million on the second day when a tax inspector testified that the amount was higher still. Hoeness, who reportedly counted German Chancellor Angela Merkel among his friends, was found guilty of “seven serious counts of tax evasion”. His legal team argued he should escape punishment because he gave himself up and filed an amended tax return. But prosecutors said he only did so because investigators were already on his case and judges ruled that his confession fell short of full disclosure.
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