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GERMANY

Football boss ‘arrested’ over Swiss account

Bayern Munich's president Uli Hoeness, at the centre of a German tax evasion scandal, was temporarily arrested last month during a search of his home and released on bail worth five million euros ($6.5 million), said a media report on Tuesday.

Football boss 'arrested' over Swiss account
Uli Hoeness: tax evasion case intensifies. Photo: AFP

Despite the scandal surrounding the Bayern president, Hoeness was at Munich's Allianz Arena on Tuesday evening to watch his team take on Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final, first-leg with the return leg in Spain on May 1st.
   
Hoeness, whose case has become a political football in election-year 
Germany, earlier admitted to "a grave mistake" over his Swiss bank account.

"I want to clear the air," he told the Bild Sport weekly.

"The law offers that possibility".

But a report by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung pointed out that tax dodgers who voluntarily turn themselves in before they are in the crosshairs of the authorities are usually not arrested.
   
The Sueddeutsche reports in its Wednesday edition that Hoeness was 
temporarily arrested on March 20th during a search of his home and released by the Munich investigating prosecutors only after posting bail worth five million euros.
   
Under the terms of his bail Hoeness had to report to authorities twice a 
week, although this condition had now been lifted, said an advance version of the report.

The newspaper said the charge on which Hoeness was arrested was not known.
   
The 61-year-old president of Germany's most successful club admitted in a 
media report last weekend to having first turned himself in to authorities in January over an unspecified amount of unpaid taxes on cash in a Swiss bank account.
   
Hoeness had originally planned to come forward after an expected 
German-Swiss tax accord which would have allowed him to settle the matter anonymously with a one-off payment, he told the Focus news weekly.
   
But Germany's political opposition — which will seek to dethrone Merkel in 
a September election — torpedoed the measure late last year on the grounds that it unfairly offered criminal amnesty to tax dodgers.
   
While Chancellor Angela Merkel has distanced herself from Hoeness, 
centre-left opposition politicians have seized on the case, charging that her conservative government is letting tax cheats off the hook too easily.
   
Hoeness told Wednesday's edition of Sport Bild: "I have realised that I 
made a grave mistake, for which I am trying to at least partially make amends by voluntarily turning myself in."
   
The opposition Social Democrats (SPD) chief Sigmar Gabriel said Monday the 
case "shows how right it was for the SPD and Greens to block the Swiss taxation agreement, with which Merkel and (Finance Minister Wolfgang) Schaeuble want to cover up multi-million euro tax evasion".
   
The amount of money Hoeness, who also draws income from a successful 
sausage company, has stashed in the Swiss account, and the taxes owed, were unclear as he and prosecutors have stayed quiet on the details, but were reported to be in the millions of euros.
   
Hoeness has already paid at least 3.2 million euros in back taxes to German 
authorities, according to news reports that have not cited sources.

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GERMANY

Germany cracks down on fake Covid vaccine documents

German police have set up a special team to fight a growing number of forged vaccine certificates being sold in the black market

Germany cracks down on fake Covid vaccine documents
People who are fully vaccinated can show their vaccination booklet, which has a stamp and a sticker inside. Photo: Ina FASSBENDER / AFP

Police in Cologne have warned of a group of fraudsters selling fake vaccination certificates, a growing problem the scale of which is still unclear.

The police said the fraudsters worked in encrypted Telegram chats, making investigations difficult, and were selling fake documents with all the stamps and signatures, including a mark about vaccination with BioNTech or AstraZeneca.

READ ALSO: Germany probes Covid-19 testing centres for fraud

The fraud involved both real traffic in fake documents as well as scams luring customers into paying €100.

People in Germany who are fully vaccinated can show their vaccination booklet, which has a stamp and a sticker inside. Those who don’t have a booklet get a piece of paper.

Covid health passes are currently being rolled out across the EU, with a European health passport expected to be available from mid-June.

READ ALSO: What’s the latest on how the EU’s ‘Covid passports’ will work for travellers?

Over 44% of the adult population in Germany has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, and more than 18% of Germans have been fully vaccinated.

German police have said forged coronavirus vaccine documents are becoming an increasing problem.

Last month, a couple in Baden-Württemberg was accused of selling fake coronavirus vaccination certificates.

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