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Opinion: Everyone's a loser

DW's Stefan Nestler
Stefan Nestler
Commentary
September 15, 2016

There seems to be no end to the 2006 World Cup affair. The revelation that Beckenbauer received millions from one of the organizing committee's sponsors doesn't look good on him or the German FA, writes Stefan Nestler.

https://p.dw.com/p/1K380
Franz Beckenbauer Vorsitz Organisationskomitee WM 2006
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. May

It makes you think of the "war of the roses" that can often break out at the end of a failed marriage. Neither admits they were at fault, only the other side is to blame. Had there been any doubt about the fact that a lot of trickery went on in and around the 2006 World Cup organizing commitee, this was dashed when the legal firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer released its report back in March. The lawyers hired by the German FA (DFB) to look into the affair have known about the 5.5 million euros ($6.2 million) paid to Franz Beckenbauer by a World Cup sponsor - and the fact that he didn't pay taxes on it until much later than these were due. However, it seems they didn't find this to be amiss.

Slow to pay up

From a purely legal point of view, the transactions may have been more or less okay. However, the question remains as to why the DFB didn't transfer the withholding tax that was owed to the tax authorities until after an audit was conducted in 2010 - several years after this should have happened. His lawyers have said that Beckenbauer paid the tax in Austria, the country in which he resides, thus passing the buck back to the DFB. This came after DFB President Reinhard Grindel accused the World Cup organizing committee of having misled the public.

Not what transparency is about

One way or another the reputation of this "German footballing icon," which has already been tarnished by the World Cup affair, is bound to take a few more hits. We now know that he wasn't working for the 2006 organizing committee for free (as he repeatedly claimed), after all. As for the DFB, well it pledged to clear up the affair, making public everything it found out about. So wouldn't that have meant going public as soon as it found out that Beckenbauer had been paid millions by a sponsor - instead of waiting until "Spiegel" newsmagazine found out about it and subsequently asked for confirmation? That's not what transparency is about. You don't have to be a prophet to figure out that the accusations and counter-accusations being tossed around by the DFB and Beckenbauer are probably just the start of a long mudslinging contest. In the end, both sides will be the losers - just like any war of the roses after a failed marriage.

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