DFP vice-president Rainer Koch has rejected reports by former club boss Reinhard Grindel that he should have been more aware of the scandals than previously known in the 2006 World Cup scandal. Koch declared on Saturday that “Reinhard Grindle’s claims are not true.”
In a ZDF interview released on Friday, Grindel said he was aware of Koch’s research prior to the publication of the news magazine “Der Spiegel” but did not “inform the presidium or at least the president”.
“Spiegel” first did not fully clarify the payment in October 2015. In essence, it’s about 6.7 million euros, which passed from the DFP in April 2005 via the FIFA World Cup to businessman Robert Louis-Trafes. The money was announced as a contribution to an exhibition for the 2006 World Cup, which never happened.
In 2002, then-World Cup organizer Franz Beckenbauer borrowed the same amount from Louis-Trafus, which eventually disappeared from the accounts of former FIFA CFO Mohamed bin Hammad.
Nearsbach was banned for a year
These publications plunged the DFP into a deep crisis in 2015, when the then-DFP Chairman Wolfgang Nearsbach resigned. Krindel was treasurer at the time, and the next year the new DFP was announced. Was elected president. In the summer of 2016, Nearsbach was banned from FIFA protocol for a year, partly because he announced his knowledge of the abuse too late.
Grindel, who resigned in 2019 due to another issue, said the opportunity was wasted because the Presidium had not been announced earlier. “Before this was released, we at DFP could have clarified the matter seriously and taken action,” he said.
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This will definitely help a lot in the credibility of DFP. He was “surprised” when he announced to the Nearsbach Presidium at a conversion conference that “Mr Koch described his situation, the first time he had heard of the whole process.”
Koch, who is currently embroiled in a crisis over the club’s leadership, is also president of the Bavarian Football Association: “It’s not surprising that Mr Krindel is currently releasing these statements, deliberately making them public.” (dpa)
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