Wolfgang Niersbach

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Wolfgang Niersbach (2014)

Wolfgang Niersbach (born November 30, 1950 in Rommerskirchen-Nettesheim , today Rommerskirchen ) is a German journalist and sports official . From March 2, 2012 to November 9, 2015, he was President of the German Football Association .

Life

Niersbach played football in his youth with the Düsseldorfer SC 99 and completed his Abitur at the Görres-Gymnasium in Düsseldorf. After graduating from high school, he studied German and began in 1973 as a volunteer at the news agency Sport-Informations-Dienst , for which he reported on numerous world and European championships as well as the Olympic Games until 1988 as an editor in the fields of football and ice hockey . In addition, he designed the Fortuna Düsseldorf stadium newspaper , Fortuna aktuell , for eleven years as the editor in charge , and the Düsseldorf EG stadium newspaper for four years .

As press chief of the European Football Championship in West Germany in 1988 , Niersbach gained his first experience in the organization of media work, which he then implemented as press officer and media director of the German Football Association (DFB). In March 1997 he also became a member of the bid committee for the 2006 World Cup . After successfully completing the application, he became executive vice-president and press chief of the organizing committee of the 2006 soccer world championship on January 1, 2001. His successor as director of communications at the DFB was Harald Stenger .

On September 15, 2006, he succeeded Bernd Pfaff as director at the DFB, this time for the areas of team management, youth, talent development and coaching. In this position, he worked closely with national team manager Oliver Bierhoff and sports director Matthias Sammer . At the DFB Bundestag in Mainz on October 26, 2007, Niersbach was appointed as the successor to Horst R. Schmidt as the new General Secretary . He was the highest full-time employee of the DFB.

After a DFB presidium meeting on December 7, 2011 in Frankfurt am Main, it was announced that Niersbach was standing for election as the new DFB President. The previous president Theo Zwanziger ended his term of office in March 2012. On March 2, 2012 Niersbach was unanimously elected as the new DFB president. His successor as General Secretary was Helmut Sandrock . In January 2013 he signed the declaration of the 53 European Fifa member associations on the reform of the Fifa statutes , in which integrity checks for members of the FIFA Executive Committee and a time limit for membership were rejected. From May 2013 he was a member of the UEFA Executive Committee and from March 2015 a member of the FIFA Executive Committee . On November 9, 2015, he resigned as DFB President. In July 2016, the FIFA Ethics Committee banned him for one year because he was aware of the suspicious cash flows by June 2015 at the latest and he did not report them to the DFB Presidium and the FIFA Ethics Committee. After the suspension was confirmed by the Appeals Committee in December 2016, he announced his retirement from his positions on international football committees.

Niersbach is divorced and has two grown daughters. At the end of 2014, he announced that he was dating a woman 23 years his junior.

criticism

In 1994, Niersbach, as DFB media director, rejected the criticism of the US media at a planned international match on April 20 ( Adolf Hitler's birthday ) and justified it as follows: "80 percent of the American press is in Jewish hands".

Niersbach's predecessor, Zwanziger, questioned the legality of Niersbach's company pension and initiated an investigation by the FIFA Ethics Committee. He was entitled to the company pension at the age of 65 or when he left the service of the DFB. The election as honorary president was rated as a departure. The chairman of the FIFA Compliance Committee, Domenico Scala , accused the DFB of a lack of transparency and of deceiving the public. In March 2015, the FIFA Ethics Committee announced that the company pension did not violate the FIFA Code of Ethics.

In October 2015, the magazine Der Spiegel reported on a loan from Robert Louis-Dreyfus to the organizing committee of the 2006 World Cup in the amount of ten million Swiss francs, which, according to Spiegel, was allegedly used to buy votes. The loan was repaid in 2005 via a FIFA account and was based on participation in the cultural program of the 2006 World Cup. According to Niersbach, the organizing committee borrowed the money in 2002 because FIFA asked for a payment of ten million Swiss francs in exchange for a grant of 250 million Swiss francs. The investigation by the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer found that the money had been transferred to an account of the Qatari company Kemco, which is owned by Mohamed bin Hammam . The further use of the money has not yet been reconstructed.

Criminal proceedings

On November 3, 2015, the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor announced that it was investigating Niersbach on suspicion of tax evasion. As DFB general secretary, Niersbach had signed the tax return for the 2006 World Cup in 2007, in which participation in the cultural program was listed as operating expenses. In May 2018, the public prosecutor brought charges against Niersbach.

The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office has initiated a criminal case against Niersbach on suspicion of fraud, dishonesty, money laundering and embezzlement on November 6, 2015. At the beginning of August 2019, the fraud charges were brought; the allegation of money laundering had been dropped the month before. At the end of April 2020, the proceedings were discontinued due to the limitation period.

At the end of 2015, the DFB submitted complaints to the public legal information and settlement agency in order to prevent the statute of limitations on the claim for damages.

In October 2018, the Frankfurt Regional Court rejected the opening of main proceedings for tax evasion against the two former DFB Presidents Theo Zwanziger and Wolfgang Niersbach as well as the former DFB General Secretary Horst R. Schmidt.

Honors

Works

  • 85 years of Fortuna Düsseldorf . Dasbach Verlag, Taunusstein 1980.
  • DEG - ice hockey fascination in Düsseldorf . Dasbach Verlag, Taunusstein 1981
  • Together with Ulf May: 50 years of DEG . n.v. 1985
  • 100 years of the DFB - the history of the German Football Association . Sportverlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-328-00850-0 .

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Niersbach  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The professional president. zeit.de, March 2, 2012, accessed on May 11, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Jörg Kramer: The network . In: Der Spiegel . No. 30 , 2015 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Spox Media: With Niersbach the DFB gets new accents - Sport - Spox.com. In: spox.com. February 29, 2012, accessed November 9, 2015 .
  4. ↑ DFB boss Niersbach and the Fifa scandal: Highly paid and clueless. spiegel.de, September 27, 2015, accessed on September 27, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Zwanziger successor: Niersbach elected to the Uefa executive. spiegel.de, May 24, 2013, accessed on May 11, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Niersbach elected to the Fifa Executive Committee. sueddeutsche.de, March 24, 2015, accessed on May 11, 2015 .
  7. ↑ DFB President Niersbach resigns because of World Cup affair. In: de.reuters.com. November 9, 2015, accessed November 10, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Niersbach resigns as DFB President dfb.de, accessed on November 10, 2015
  9. ↑ World Cup affair: FIFA bans Niersbach for one year ( memento from March 12, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) zeit.de, July 25, 2016
  10. ↑ Niersbach announces withdrawal from football positions faz.net, December 16, 2016
  11. ↑ Noble knight of unfortunate form. taz.de, December 10, 2011, accessed on May 11, 2015 .
  12. ↑ The Jewish footballer Julius Hirsch. deutschlandfunk.de, June 3, 2012, accessed on May 11, 2015 .
  13. ↑ Zwanziger puts DFB boss Niersbach in trouble. welt.de, February 20, 2015, accessed on May 11, 2015 .
  14. ↑ Fifa official accuses DFB of lack of transparency spiegel.de, March 6, 2015
  15. ^ Sources from Niersbach according to FIFA Rechtsens zeit.de, March 13, 2015
  16. ↑ Jürgen Dahlkamp, ​​Gunther Latsch, Udo Ludwig, Jörg Schmitt, Jens Weinreich: Summer, sun, black money . In: Der Spiegel , October 17, 2015, No. 43, p. 10 ff.
  17. ↑ His name is Niersbach, he didn't know anything spiegel.de, October 22, 2015
  18. ^ An account in Sarnen spiegel.de, March 4, 2016
  19. ^ The wording of the press release faz.net, November 3, 2015
  20. ^ Niersbach signed an explosive tax return sueddeutsche.de, November 4th, 2015
  21. ↑ Sportschau.de
  22. ↑ World Cup affair: raids on Beckenbauer and Radmann sueddeutsche.de, September 1, 2016
  23. Jump up ↑ Football: Indictment in connection with the German Football Association (DFB). Press release of the Federal Prosecutor's Office of August 6, 2019, accessed on the same day.
  24. ↑ https://www.br.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/stichtag-im-sommermaerchen-prozess-tritt-heute-verjaehrung-ein,RxGKeHW
  25. ↑ World Cup affair: DFB goes against Beckenbauer and Fifa in front of sueddeutsche.de, February 5, 2016
  26. ↑ Michael Ashelm: No legal proceedings against former DFB officials . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine from October 15, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Niersbach, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sports journalist and football official
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Rommerskirchen-Nettesheim , Germany