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Beckenbauer was ‘paid millions’ as WC2006 chair
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LAWYERS for football legend Franz Beckenbauer yesterday rejected claims he was paid millions as chairman of Germany’s World Cup organizing committee and sought to hide the sum from tax authorities.
News website Spiegel Online had reported that Beckenbauer drew a fee of more than 5 million euros (US$5.6 million) and that he failed to report the payment to tax authorities.
The report was yet another embarrassment for Beckenbauer, 71, who is being investigated by Swiss authorities in relation to corruption allegations over the awarding of the 2006 World Cup to Germany.
According to Spiegel, the payment to Beckenbauer was taken from a donation of 12 million euros made by a World Cup sponsor, the gambling company Oddset.
But Beckenbauer’s attorneys at Nesselhauf law firm rejected the claim, saying in a statement that the earning arose from his advertising work and that he had “been promptly taxed at his Austrian residence”.
The Spiegel claims had sparked anger from current DFB boss Reinhard Grindel, who accused the man nicknamed “the Kaiser” (the emperor) of lying and misleading the public.
“We know that Franz Beckenbauer worked for Oddset in the context of the World Cup. But we were not aware that he drew a sum of 5.5 million euros from the budget of the organization of World Cup 2006,” Grindel said in a statement.
“Obviously, given these conditions, we cannot say that he had worked on an unpaid basis for the organizing committee,” the DFB boss added in a statement from Athens, where he was attending a UEFA congress.
Beckenbauer did not declare the sum to tax authorities for four years, according to Spiegel.
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