German officers have raided the headquarters of the German Football Federation (DFB) alongside municipal offices in several cities as part of a corruption probe linked to tickets for the Euro 2024 football tournament, police and the DFB said on Wednesday.
The investigation centres on allegations that multiple cities were granted exclusive pre-sale rights to purchase thousands of tickets for the international competition in Germany.
Prosecutors in Bochum and the criminal police office in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), are leading the probe on suspicion of accepting and granting undue advantages.
Herbert Reus, interior minister in NRW, stressed that "a football ticket is not part of [a civil servant's] salary. Anyone in the civil service who holds out their hand for money will get a visit from us."
The DFB declined to comment on the investigation besides confirming the raids at its Frankfurt headquarters.
However, a spokesman stressed that the probe was not directed against the federation itself.
Security sources said the investigation is focussed on two men, a 66-year-old German national and a 46-year-old French national.
The 66-year-old, a former employee of the city administration in the western city of Gelsenkirchen, is alleged to have been invited to Munich for the Euro 2024 semi-final between Spain and France.
He is said to have gained a financial advantage of around €2,400 ($2,700).
He had previously come to the attention of the police on suspicion of fraud, as well as withholding and misappropriating wages, and is no longer employed by the city, the sources said.
Similar invitations were also extended to Euro 2024 project managers in other host cities, they said.
Meanwhile, further allegations centre on a subsidiary of UEFA Events SA and DFB EURO GmbH, set up to organize the tournament.
Called Euro 2024 GmbH and based at the DFB headquarters at the time, the subsidiary is thought to have handed out thousands of tickets for internal use to the 10 host cities.
Whether, and to what extent, these tickets and invitations to matches were accepted is also the subject of the probe, according to the sources.
The raids targeted municipal offices in Gelsenkirchen, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich, while a so-called request for the surrender of evidence has been issued to the Leipzig city administration.
Searches are also to be carried out at two companies in North Rhine-Westphalia and one company in Bavaria.
