DFB could face back payment of up to 26.5 million dollars

Frankfurt, (GNA/dpa) - The German Football Federation (DFB) could face a back payment of up to 25 million euros (26.5 million dollars) in a worse-case scenario around the 2006 World Cup affair, reports on Friday said.

Citing calculations by tax authorities, the report said the DFB would be confronted with this sum if it is stripped of its non-profit making status and with it of all tax breaks for 2006.

German tax authorities are looking into a payment of 6.7 million euros made in 2005 to the ruling body FIFA which was declared as money for a cultural event around the 2006 home World Cup, which never took place.

The money was rather, via FIFA, for former Adidas chief executive Robert Louis-Dreyfus who had forwarded the sum on behalf of the World Cup organizing committee to FIFA several years earlier.

The DFB believes the payment would have also been part of operating expenditures if it had been declared properly. As a result, the federation expects a back payment of around 3.5 million euros.

Should the DFB be confronted with a payment of 25 million euros it could demand the money back from former presidents Wolfgang Niersbach and Theo Zwanziger, and former DFB general secretary Horst R Schmidt, according to the report.

The three are under criminal investigation as Zwanziger and Schmidt ordered the payment to Louis-Dreyfus, and Niersbach signed the tax declaration.

The report however also said that all World Cup organizing committee members were insured against pecuniary damage.

GNA