By Barry Whelan, dpa
Berlin (dpa) – FIFA’s ethics committee Friday opened adjudicatory proceedings against former German football federation (DFB) president Wolfgang Niersbach and will consider a two-year football ban.
The case relates to Niersbach’s conduct relating to Germany’s bid for
2006 World Cup when he was vice-president of the German organizing committee.
The adjudicatory chamber of the ethics committee will consider a two-year ban on all football-related activity recommended by the committee’s investigatory chamber, an ethics committee statement said.
Niersbach resigned as DFB chief in November in the wake of the affair surrounding a payment made to football governing body FIFA connected to the 2006 World Cup. He remains on the new FIFA Council and the executive committee of European football body UEFA.
FIFA said the ethics committee had decided to open formal adjudicatory proceedings against Niersbach after the investigatory chamber began its investigations on March 22.
In its final report, the investigatory chamber has recommended a two-year ban and a fine of 30,000 Swiss francs (some 30,000 dollars) for violations of four articles of the FIFA code of ethics, the statement said.
«Under its deputy chairman Mr Alan Sullivan, the adjudicatory chamber has studied the report of the investigatory chamber carefully and decided to institute formal adjudicatory proceedings against Mr Niersbach,» it said.
Niersbach will be invited to submit his position, provide any evidence and may request a hearing.
Niersbach resigned as DFB president on November 9, saying he took repsonsibility for the affair surrounding a payment made by Germany’s
2006 World Cup organizing committee, under its president Franz Beckenbauer, of 6.7 million euros (7.4 million dollars) to FIFA.
German prosecuting authorities have launched a tax evasion investigation into Niersbach, former DFB president Theo Zwanziger and former DFB secretary general Horst R Schmidt around the payment made in 2005.
The affair ended a long direct association with the federation for Niersbach, 65, who was appointed DFB secretary general in October
2007 and succeeded Zwanziger as the federation’s president on March 2, 2012. However he remains the federation’s representative on the key FIFA and UEFA bodies.
Beckenbauer has also been the focus of inquiries around the 2006 World Cup which led to the DFB hiring outside law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to investigate.
In a report in March on its investigation, the law firm said it found no evidence of vote buying around the awarding of the 2006 World Cup to Germany, but new unclear payments – including from an account held by Beckenbauer – had emerged.
The probe centred on a payment of 6.7 million euros (7.3 million
dollars) from German tournament organizers via FIFA to former Adidas boss Robert Louis-Dreyfus. The money was declared as a payment for a World Cup cultural event which never took place.
Freshfield said some 10 million Swiss francs were transferred in 2002 from the account of a Swiss law firm to an account in Qatar of a company whose only partner was former FIFA top official Mohamed Bin Hammam.
In February, Beckenbauer was fined 7,000 Swiss francs and given a warning by the ethics committees for failing to cooperate with its investigation into bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar respectively.
He had been provisionally banned in June 2014 for 90 days regarding the case, and as a result did not travel to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup won by Germany.
However the ethics committee in February said the case «did not look into the matters related to the awarding» of the 2006 World Cup to Germany.»
