Government, police coy on inquiry into MFA, Beckenbauer $250k World Cup contract

The government and the police have refused to commit into launching an investigation into a controversial contract that saw the Malta Football Association earn $250,000 in exchange for the national team to play a friendly against Bayern Munich. 

Parliamentary secretary for sport Chris Agius admitted with MaltaToday that he hasn’t even followed the case since the Daily Mail reported last week that the contract was signed following a “secret meeting” between then MFA president Joe Mifsud and German football legend Franz Beckenbauer in June 2000.

At the time, Mifsud held a seat on FIFA’s executive committee that eventually awarded the 2006 World Cup to Germany. Beckenbauer was Bayern Munich president, as well as the head of the organising committee that spearheaded the German bid.

Malta voted for Germany to host the 2006 tournament, in a vote that Germany marginally won by 12-11 against South Africa, and the Daily Mail suggested that Beckenbauer was “complicit in influencing the votes of FIFA’s executive committee”. 

However, Agius told MaltaToday that it “is still premature” for the government to launch an inquiry into the case.

“I think that the MFA should launch an inquiry into it,” he said. When informed about the details of the case and the fact that they have appeared in the foreign press, Agius pledged to update himself on the case. “The government could launch one depending on further developments,” he said. 

German football was shaken to the core following revelations that Germany’s World Cup bidding committee had established a €6.7 million slush fund to secure votes for their bid. 

German police on Tuesday raided the headquarters of the German FA on suspicion that the association failed to register the €6.7 million transfer to the organising committee in tax returns. 

Malta’s Police Commissioner, Michael Cassar has not responded to MaltaToday’s query as to why the police have never investigated allegations that Mifsud had misappropriated funds when he signed the contract, and whether they will now start investigating them. 

The contract, signed between Mifsud and broadcasting firm CWL, saw CWL agree to pay $250,000 in return for exclusive broadcasting rights for the Malta-Bayern game. The sum agreed, $250,000, was scribbled into the contract. 

Notably, the contract includes a peculiar secrecy clause about the contract’s very existence. 

 “The parties shall keep strictly confidential the content of this agreement and not make any disclosure thereof to any third parties,” it reads. “In order to secure this obligation, the parties undertake to limit knowledge of the existence and content of this agreement to the board and the top level management of the parties”.  

Although the contract explicitly obliged CWL to pay the MFA the fee within two weeks after it was signed on 1 June, 2000, it only reached the football association’s coffers in October 2000. 

Current MFA president Norman Darmanin Demajo – who was treasurer at the time – said that he had been informed that “$250,000 had fallen from the sky into the MFA’s bank account” four months after the Bayern Munich contract was signed.

Joe Mifsud admitted that Beckenbauer was involved in the contract negotiations, in a court testimony during a long-standing libel case he had instituted against former Illum journalist Mark Attard for reporting claims by Darmanin Demajo on how Mifsud had spent TV rights earned for the friendly.  

“Infront [a sports marketing company that CWL had merged into in 2002] had brought Beckenbauer over and proposed that Bayern Munich come to Malta to play a friendly during the German football winter break,” Mifsud had said. “Infront would pay the MFA for TV rights to the game.”  

“Why would Franz Beckenbauer personally travel to Malta to arrange the broadcasting rights of a friendly between the national team and Bayern Munich that hardly anybody even watched?” Darmanin Demajo told MaltaToday. “In normal cases, the MFA would have actually had to pay Bayern Munich to come over.

“Why was that secrecy clause included in the contract? What’s so secret about a friendly between Malta and Bayern Munich?” 

He said that it is likely that England and South Africa – Germany’s contestants for the 2006 World Cup – had also tried to woo the Maltese vote by arranging friendlies between Malta and their national teams. However, everything in both those cases was done above board and no financial inducement to the MFA was offered. 

Attempts by MaltaToday to contact Joe Mifsud about the case failed. The former MFA president had told the Daily Mail that he “has been out of football for many years and is not prepared to make any comment to anyone” about the case.