German FA boss denies corruption
Print Edition
GERMANY’S football federation president again strongly denied any vote-buying in the winning bid to host the 2006 World Cup, saying yesterday that “everything was done with honest means”.
Wolfgang Niersbach said a payment to FIFA first reported by the weekly Der Spiegel last week was privately arranged to secure a FIFA grant to the German World Cup organizers.
The deal was made during a private meeting between FIFA President Sepp Blatter and World Cup organizing committee chief Franz Beckenbauer in January 2002, Niersbach said. The meeting came two years after Germany had been awarded the World Cup by one vote in 2000.
Der Spiegel reported last Friday that a slush fund of 10.3 million Swiss francs (about US$6 million at the time) was set up to buy the votes of four Asian representatives on the FIFA executive committee.
At a hastily organized news conference in Frankfurt yesterday, Niersbach repeated that Germany had done nothing wrong in bidding for the 2006 World Cup.
“The key message is that everything was done with honest means for the 2006 World Cup bid. There were no slush funds, no vote-buying,” said Niersbach, who had denied the Spiegel allegations already on Monday.
Niersbach said he visited Beckenbauer at his Austrian residence on Tuesday and learned about the deal reached between him and Blatter.
FIFA was ready to finance the organizers to the tune of 250 million Swiss francs in return for a payment of 10 million Swiss francs, Niersbach said.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
