Germany’s preparations to host the 2006 World Cup were overshadowed by scandal on Wednesday after it was alleged that the company that won the contract to build the stadium where the first game will be played had paid millions of euros in bribes.
The country’s World Cup organisers said on Wednesday that they were shaken following the arrest two days ago of several top German football executives — including Karl-Heinz Wildmoser, the president of 1860 Munich, one of Germany’s leading clubs.
Wildmoser is alleged to have taken bribes from an Austrian construction firm that won the tender to build a new stadium in Munich, where the tournament will open in 2006.
According to prosecutors, Wildmoser, his son and at least two other associates were secretly paid €2,8-million — 1% of the total construction cost. In return, they gave inside information to the firm Alpine, allowing it to beat its rivals to the contract.
On Wednesday, Germany’s World Cup officials said the scandal would not stop the stadium from being completed in time for the opening match of the 2006 finals. But Wolfgang Niersbach, the vice-president of the organising committee, said: ”It’s terribly painful.”
”We’ve always worked in a clean, clear and transparent fashion, and that was to be our motto for 2006. That this was possible at all hurts very much.”
He said that Franz Beckenbauer, the committee’s president, was also shaken by the allegation that Wildmoser and other executives from his club were corrupt.
”I sincerely hope, based on what the finals mean for our country, that there won’t be anything else emerging that we don’t know about today,” Niersbach told German radio.
The alleged irregularities came to light when German authorities examined the tax records of a construction company belonging to Wildmoser’s son. On Tuesday more than 100 officials carried out raids in Austria, Switzerland and several German cities including Munich. Detectives arrested Wildmoser at his home.
Wildmoser had used his fortune — generated from beer tents at the city’s Oktoberfest — to propel his modest club into Germany’s premier league.
He is said to have protested his innocence of the charge against him.
The corruption claims are not the first to emerge since Germany surprisingly beat South Africa to the World Cup by 12 votes to 11.
Last April the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung claimed that Germany’s most powerful club, Bayern Munich, and a firm linked to the German media mogul Leo Kirch had bribed four small Fifa federations in an attempt to get them to support Germany’s World Cup bid.
In return for their vote, Bayern would play friendlies in the four countries, with Kirch picking up the bill for TV rights, the newspaper alleged. Beckenbauer has denied any wrongdoing.
”Germans have traditionally had the reputation of not being corrupt,” said the sports journalist Christian Sachs on Wednesday. ”But given the economic situation here now, people are trying to rake it in … It’s a big scandal.”
”Germany is in a state of shock,” said an editorial in the mass-circulation newspaper Bild yesterday. ”A first shadow has been cast on our beautiful World Cup. The whole world is watching us, and even more critically now.”
On Wednesday, however, the spokesperson for the organising committee, Gerd Graus, insisted the World Cup’s image had not been tarnished.
”We don’t see this happening,” he said. ”It’s unfortunate for German football, but we don’t think there will be any long-term damage.” – Guardian Unlimited