FIFA bans council member Niersbach in World Cup bids probe
July 26, 2016 | 1:20pm
FIFA council member Wolfgang Niersbach, a member of FIFA's ruling council, was banned from soccer for one year on Monday in the first sanction from the investigation into Germany's 2006 World Cup bid.
FIFA's ethics committee found Niersbach guilty of failing to report findings about possible unethical conduct and conflicts of interest during the bidding process.
Niersbach, who was a vice president of the 2006 World Cup organizing committee in charge of media and marketing, described the punishment as "inappropriate and excessive."
Last year, Niersbach had been considered a possible successor to UEFA President Michel Platini before resigning as president of the German soccer federation when allegations against the bid first surfaced.
Niersbach retained his elected positions on the top decision-making bodies at both FIFA and UEFA. He is the first member of the rebranded FIFA Council, which replaced the discredited executive committee in May, to be sanctioned by the ethics division.
"This decision hits me hard," Niersbach said. "I was confident after last Thursday's hearing in Zurich that the ethics commission would not impose a ban, but that it would follow my argument that I am only to blame for a belated report on the critical payments between the 2006 World Cup organizing committee and FIFA in 2005, of which I gradually became aware in the summer of 2015, and that it would set a different punishment.
"I acknowledged my mistake and regretted it again."
Niersbach is consulting his lawyers about whether to appeal against his ban.
Swiss federal prosecutors, and German criminal and tax investigators, also have wider ongoing criminal cases into the 2006 World Cup — a hugely successful tournament at the time which the host nation called its "Summer Fairytale."
The probe involves irregular seven-figure payments and contracts during the bidding process and organization of the World Cup implicating senior officials.
The main FIFA ethics case focuses on former Germany great Franz Beckenbauer, who headed the World Cup organizing team and joined the FIFA executive committee in 2007; Theo Zwanziger, who replaced Beckenbauer at FIFA in 2011; Horst Schmidt, vice president of the World Cup organizing panel; and Stefan Hans, chief financial officer for the organizers.
In February, an inquiry report commissioned by the federation tried to explain a complex trail of payments of 6.7 million euros ($7 million) and 10 million Swiss francs ($10 million) that linked Beckenbauer, then-FIFA president Sepp Blatter, FIFA powerbroker Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar and Robert Louis-Dreyfus, the late former Adidas executive and part owner of Swiss marketing agency Infront.
The report, by law firm Freshfields, did not rule out, but could not prove, that votes were bought when Germany beat a Nelson Mandela-supported South Africa bid in a 12-11 vote of FIFA executive committee members in 2000.
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