Summer fairytale trial

“Only played bank”: Blatter testifies as a witness

Sepp Blatter

(Bild: AFP)

Former FIFA President Joseph Blatter has revealed little about the ominous money flows surrounding the 2006 FIFA World Cup as a witness in the summer fairytale trial at Frankfurt District Court. The Swiss, who will be 89 years old on March 10, spoke willingly in a 50-minute video link, but said this sentence several times about the role of the world soccer association: "We only played bank." 

Blatter, FIFA boss from 1998 to 2016, was referring to the 10 million Swiss francs, or 6.7 million euros, at the center of the affair. In April 2005, the German Football Association transferred the amount to FIFA, which forwarded the money to an account of French entrepreneur Robert Louis-Dreyfus one day later. Blatter described the process as a "service" and explained: "We did a banking transaction and didn't ask why."

World Cup gala canceled
The transfer was declared as a contribution to a planned World Cup gala, which was canceled at the beginning of 2006 for cost reasons - as Blatter also saw it. In 2002, Louis-Dreyfus had transferred a loan of ten million Swiss francs to an account of World Cup OC boss Franz Beckenbauer. This sum ended up in a company account of the then FIFA Vice President, Mohamed bin Hammam, in Qatar. It is still unclear why.

Franz Beckenbauer

(Bild: MARTIN MEISSNER)

Blatter has memory problems
Last week, Fedor Radmann, a long-time confidant of Beckenbauer's, had supported a version from the early days of the affair: According to this, a transfer of ten million Swiss francs to a company account of Bin Hammam was intended as security for a later 250 million franc grant from the world association for the World Cup in Germany.

According to previous witness testimony, Beckenbauer had extracted the World Cup grant in a one-to-one meeting with Blatter. Blatter himself spoke of a "loan", but could "really not remember" the one-on-one conversation with Beckenbauer. The DFB booked the 6.7 million euros as an operating expense in 2006. In the opinion of the public prosecutor's office, this was inadmissible. The association had thereby evaded taxes amounting to more than 13 million euros. Former DFB President Theo Zwanziger, the only remaining defendant in the proceedings, strictly rejects this accusation.

The presiding judge Eva-Marie Distler had often reprimanded witnesses in the past for their lack of memory. In the Blatter case, however, she expressly emphasized that the former FIFA boss did not fall into this category and concluded the hearing with the words: "This was the hearing of a former president who is getting on in years."