By Paul Nicholson
March 8 – The investigation into the German 2006 World Cup bid is dragging in more big names with former FIFA general secretary Urs Linsi (pictured) the latest to be tied to the irregularities.
Linsi is mentioned 58 times in the Freshfields report to the German Football Federation on Friday, where it is clear he both knew about the payments and played a central role in the movement of the SFr10million payment from the Germans that ended up in Qatar in an account of a company owned by Mohammed Bin Hammam.
In Spring 2005, the Germans wanted to transfer the SFr10 million (€6.7 million) initially to an account of Adidas supremo Robert Louis-Dreyfus at Paribas Zurich.
But, according to a report on Swiss financial website Insideparadeplatz, Linsi contacted German federation officials Horst R. Schmidt and Theo Zwanziger and the money was instead transferred on his instruction to a FIFA account at UBS in Zurich.
FIFA then initiated the same amount to be paid to the account of Louis-Dreyfus.
The payment reference on the transfer had been changed from FIFA opening gala, to FIFA World Cup Germany 2006.
Linsi joined FIFA in 1999 as head of finance and from 2002 to 2007 was General Secretary. He is currently president of Bank Sparhafen which itself is believed to caught up in the investigations by Swiss and US federal justice authorities into the corruption allegations that have hit world football.
That investigation now appears to be widening significantly in Europe, in particular into looking into the World Cup bidding. It was initially looking at the 2018 and 2022 World Cup wins for Russia and Qatar but subsequently both South Africa 2010 and now Germany 2006 have attracted attention.
At first the US investigations were centred around corruption in the US and on CONMEBOL and CONCACAF federation officials who had either conducted their business in the US or used the US banking system.
In their investigation Freshfields examined 128,000 electronic and other documents and interviewed 31 people but crucially it said it had encountered several “hurdles” in its investigation, including missing electronic information, deleted emails, files that weren’t accessible as well as being unable to interview certain people. One of these was Linsi.
“(…) Past or current FIFA officials as Urs Linsi (…) we have with regard to the investigation of the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt am Main can not ask,” said the report.
“Because of these restrictions, we cannot present a conclusive picture today,” Freshfields said at the press conference announcing the findings last week.
“You could connect the payment with the FIFA re-election of Blatter or for the 2006 vote but that would be pure speculation,” said Freshfields.
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