Pressure "is growing" on 2006 World Cup Organizing Committee President Franz Beckenbauer to speak out on the "latest corruption allegations" surrounding the 2006 World Cup in Germany, according to the AP. Beckenbauer has been linked to "disgraced" former FIFA official Jack Warner in reports published Tuesday. He was the '06 bid's "leading figure and the president of the committee." A day after German FA (DFB) President Wolfgang Niersbach resigned, two German newspapers linked Beckenbauer to Warner, who was then a member of the FIFA exec committee. Rainer Koch, one of the two caretaker presidents after Niersbach's resignation, said, "We appeal to him (Beckenbauer) to bring himself more closely into the explanation of what happened." The Süddeutsche Zeitung and Bild reported Tuesday that Beckenbauer's signature "was on a draft contract with Warner, promising favors shortly before the vote" on the host of the 2006 World Cup. Koch said that there was "no proof" that the contract influenced the voting behavior of Warner. He said in a statement that there are "no indications that the contract was ever implemented" (AP, 11/10). Deutsche Welle reported according to Bild the proposed deal was "dated four days prior to the vote" in which Germany beat South Africa 12-11 after Charles Dempsey, an exec committee member from New Zealand, abstained, citing "intolerable external pressure." The paper "did not reveal its sources." Bild also said that the document uncovered by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the firm that the DFB hired to look into "possible wrongdoing," was what led Niersbach to resign on Monday. On Tuesday, the chairman of the Bundestag's standing committee on sport, Dagmar Freitag, supported Koch's demand that Beckenbauer "do more to clear up the affair." Freitag: "There is no other way, there are others who know more than Wolfgang Niersbach" (DW, 11/10).
