Experienced readers will know: now he's drumming up support again and wants to attract subscribers. The answer to that is: correct. He can't spare you that. He's even allowed to do so, because he's got something to show for himself.
Could there be a better date than this Wednesday, 25 June 2025, when the German Football Federation (DFB), the biggest FA worldwide, was fined for tax evasion and the chances of getting the 22 million euros that the DFB had to pay to the tax authorities eight years ago are dwindling?
Could there be a better moment than this to finally subscribe to this small but exclusive newsletter?
Today, you can see what journalistic investigations can sometimes lead to.
My investigations.
My conversation almost exactly ten years ago about an ominous 6.7 million payment was electrifying; it was a highly exciting few weeks anyway, with the FIFA charges and all kinds of revelations. Three and a half months later, this resulted in two consecutive cover stories in DER SPIEGEL magazine.
Jens Weinreich
This was followed by several lawsuits in Switzerland and Germany. It escalated into one of the biggest sports scandals in German history. Lawyers and private investigators pocketed tens of millions. DFB presidents came and went, went and came. Legions of lawyers were busy with the case. And the legal disputes are not ending today – nor is the investigation. I had a lot of fun, was often surprised by the reporting, and commented on it far too rarely since that wild year of 2015.
The DFB wants to recover 24 million from the former president and FIFA executive Theo Zwanziger. Absurd in many ways. Zwanziger was the only one of the former DFB grandees who remained sane since 2015 and can remember certain events.
Jens Weinreich
I would love to write: Today, I will tell you the true story of the summer fairy tale. However, that will take a little longer. And shall I tell you something? I can wait. No problem at all.
The investigations surrounding the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, which made headlines around the world, did not begin ten years ago. Strictly speaking, they began more than 30 years ago, when the DFB made its first deal with The FA, which included the 1996 European Championship and the 2006 World Cup.
- The investigations began in 1996, when FIFA awarded the television rights for the 2002 and 2006 World Cups to companies belonging to the ISL Group and the Kirch conglomerate under corrupt circumstances; when Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder played a dubious role in the process;
- when Fedor Radmann was not yet Beckenbauer's whisperer and instead had to present himself to me and a colleague in a restaurant in Cancún in November 1996 as an all-knowing puppet master, which he certainly was not;
- when I ate strawberry cake at Blatter's former mother-in-law's house in 1997 and was allowed to return home with an interesting dossier;
- when Kirch's top executive Dieter Hahn read our book ‘Das Milliardenspiel’ one night a year later and told Thomas Kistner and me shortly afterwards with a grin: Good work, but you don't know the best part...;
- when Wolfgang Niersbach, on the evening of 6 July 2000, hours after the 2006 World Cup had been awarded, stormed out of a lakeside restaurant in Küsnacht in a rage at these two journalists and shouted, ‘You want to take the World Cup away from us!’, because he feared that corruption had already been proven, when in fact it was only my old football buddy Martin Sonneborn and the satirical magazine Titanic who had caused the commotion and ensured that the Germans did not celebrate with a lavish party, but rather held a funeral service;
- when the ISL Group went bankrupt in 2001 and Kirch soon after slid into insolvency;
- when I copied thousands of pages from the ISL archive and met with informants in Zurich at night who handed over files;
- when I had the questionable privilege of dining with Beckenbauer, Blatter, Platini and Havelange at Mohamed Bin Hammam's residence in Doha in autumn 2003;
- when the figure of 142 million Swiss francs in bribes was finally made public in the ISL criminal trial in Zug in 2008 (it took a while longer for the list of bribes to be published);
- as we were able to increasingly describe the ISL bribery system as a global Olympic bribery system involving FIFA, the IOC, the IAAF, FIBA, UEFA and numerous other Olympic IFs – including some IOC members.
- when Jack Warner promised a tsunami of revelations in 2011...
Jens Weinreich
James Oliver
... And yes, all of this has to do with the 2006 World Cup, with Horst Dassler and Adidas, the IOC, with corruption, with organised global football crime, as outlined in the first US indictment in May 2015 (also incomplete, just as the legal investigation of the Sommermärchen affair remains incomplete) ... and above all:
None of this would have been possible without investigative journalism.
You usually sat in the front row with me. And now it's your turn! Want to know more? Want to know better? Want the whole story? Don't want to be fooled by propaganda and imitation journalism (he-said-she-said)?
Then just take a subscription.
I can't promise you any new revelations on the scale of the Sommermärchen affair, as it is called in Germany, but let's wait and see. I'll do my best.
- I predicted the outcome of the IOC presidential election in March with a precision that no other media outlet was able to match.
- Every week, you'll get small and slightly larger exclusives, as has been the case for years, and that's how it will continue.
- The IOC, the DFB and many other sports multinationals have understood this and are reading along as a precaution because they can learn something. Now it's up to you to book diligently if you want to stay well informed.
You may want to take out a business subscription – it's worth it!
We're going to have a lot of fun together.
It's a wonderful day to write this sentence:
It's worth investing in journalism.
And to all those who believe that this will eventually come to an end, let me say this: investigative journalism is not dead. I will continue. It is a perfect day to make this promise.
Stay curious!
