Police raid MFA offices over World Cup corruption allegations

The police have raided the Malta Football Association headquarters in Valletta in connection with corruption allegations surrounding the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

The investigation comes after police commissioner Michael Cassar failed to answer to MaltaToday’s questions as to why the police have never investigated allegations that former MFA president Joe Mifsud had misappropriated funds linked to a friendly match between German giants Bayern Munich and the Maltese national team.

The investigation follows the resignation of the German FA’s president Wolfgang Niersbach who said he was taking political responsibility for a controversial €6.7 million payment to world football’s governing body FIFA allegedly used to bribe officials to vote for Germany’s World Cup bid.

Earlier this month, MaltaToday reported that government and the police refused to commit into launching an investigation into a controversial contract that saw the MFA earn $250,000 in exchange for the national team to play a friendly against Bayern. 

In 2000, Mifsud held a seat on FIFA’s executive committee that eventually awarded the 2006 World Cup to Germany.

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

Meanwhile, Franz Beckenbauer, a former Bayern Munich defender who captained and coached Germany to separate World Cup titles, has been linked to the corruption scandal.

Earlier this week, Mifsud, told court that he had no doubt that current MFA president Norman Darmanin Demajo was “the snake” who leaked the “secret contract” signed with Beckenbauer, the head of Germany's 2006 World Cup organising committee, which saw the Maltese FA earn $250,000 five weeks before the crucial vote on the host of the 2006 World Cup.

The investigation said that the deal was struck after a secret meeting was held between Beckenbauer and Mifsud at the latter’s private residence, but the former MFA president told court he could not remember if the German legend was present during the signing of the agreement.

Mifsud was testifying in a libel case he instituted against Darmanin Demajo after the latter called on the association to investigate Mifsud on alleged corruption, misappropriation of funds and breaching the MFA’s statute.

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 – a subsidiary of KirchMedia -  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.

During the same period, Bayern played two more friendlies, in Tunisia and Thailand, and all payments were made through CWL. In his latest book, ‘The Dirty Game’, British journalist Andrew Jennings wrote that Bayern played against Malta for “an extraordinary fee of $300,000 for the TV rights, to be paid by KirchMedia into an undisclosed bank account in Malta.”