Raid on homes over 2006 German bid

SWISS police raided homes last week as part of a broadening probe into corruption allegations over the awarding of the 2006 World Cup to Germany, prosecutors said yesterday.

The investigation targeting members of the 2006 World Cup organising committee, including German football legend Franz Beckenbauer, has been expanded to include Urs Linsi, the former general secretary of world football’s governing body Fifa, the office of Switzerland’s Attorney-General said in a statement sent to reporters.

Switzerland’s top prosecution authority said “that on 23 November 2016 it conducted house searches with the support of the Federal Office of Police (fedpol) at various locations in the German-speaking part of Switzerland”.

The searches were carried out in connection with a probe launched last year into allegations of fraud, criminal mismanagement, money laundering and misappropriation connected with the awarding of the 2006 World Cup to Germany.

The investigation, opened in November 2015, targeted Beckenbauer, who headed the committee promoting Germany’s candidacy to host the 2006 World Cup, along with HansRudolf Schmidt, Theo Zwanziger and Wolfgang Niersbach.

The attorney-general’s office said yesterday that “a further suspect is Urs Linsi” who was Fifa secretary-general from June 1999 through June 2007.

The statement said the house searches were linked to “a payment of million (R99.6-million) made in April 2005 by the German Football Association (Deutscher Fussball-Bund, DFB) to Robert Louis-Dreyfus”.

The late Louis-Dreyfus, an exboss of Adidas, was accused of lending the same amount to DFB to help it set up a secret fund to buy votes in support of its 2006 World Cup bid. — AFP