A Bloomberg report said the president of FC Bayern Munich was convicted for tax evasion charges and has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
Uli Hoeness was said to have evaded €3.5 million or $4.9 million in taxes from trading profits that were booked through a Swiss acount. The news agency noted that the amount was initially claimed at €18.5 million on the first day of the trial, and was later whittled down to €27.2 million. Both amounts were not contested by Hoeness nor his lawyers, Bloomberg said.
Prosecutor Achim von Engel asked the court earlier to hand down a five and a half year sentence to Hoeness. Hanns Feigen, one of Hoeness' defense lawyers, argued that if Hoeness' case was not dropped, any jail term will be suspended. Bloomberg said this means that the defendant will not be going to prison and will be given the chance to comply with the court's requirements as compensation for the offense.
Hoeness' case has reportedly tainted companies that are in one way affiliated or have connections with the football club. Aside from Allianz Arena, who houses Bayern Munich, the chief executive officers of Adidas AG, Deutsche Telekom AG , Allianz SE and Audi AG, a unit of Volkswagen AG, currently sit on the football team's supervisory board. Professor of finance Klaus Fleischer at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich said that the case will incur a considerable loss of image to the affiliate companies.
"The compliance departments of the companies that have close ties to the club should have immediately taken action and put their commitment on hold or at least take a very neutral stance. That they didn't care much is especially obvious for Allianz, which acquired a stake in FC Bayern long after the tax evasion issue became public knowledge," Fleischer said.
On February 27, Allianz CEO Michael Diekmann had said at his company's yearly press conference that they see no need to distance themselves from Bayern Munich.
