By Paul Nicholson
March 4 – The investigation by law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer into the corruption allegations around the 2006 World Cup has found that there is no clear evidence of vote-buying but does not rule out the possibility.
“We have no proof of vote buying,” Christian Duve of Freshfields told a Frankfurt press conference.
However, the law firm said that because files and information surrounding the bid were incomplete, the accusations of vote-buying could not be completely cleared,
What the investigators did find were a series of unclear payments and transfers between German bid leader Franz Beckenbauer and a law firm in Switzerland. It says the money was then transferred to a company in Qatar, belonging to disgraced former FIFA official Mohamed Bin Hammam.
Bin Hammam has denied receiving the money.
The report identifies a transfer of €6.7 million ($7.3 million) made by the German FA to FIFA on April 27, 2005 that was “falsely declared” by the World Cup organising committee for an opening gala and that the money had been intended for former Adidas chief Robert Louis-Dreyfus.
Beckenbauer has repeatedly denied the corruption allegations saying the money was paid to FIFA. However, he has said he signed several documents at the time without reading them first.
Former DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach has also denied any wrongdoing but resigned his postion last November after police raided the DFB’s headquarters and his home as part of a tax-evasion investigation linked to the 2005 payment.
More to follow…
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