German Soccer Icon Accepts Jail Term for Tax Evasion

BERLIN - Uli Hoeness, long one of Germany's most beloved soccer stars, said Friday that he would resign his post as president of the country's most storied team, Bayern Munich, and would not appeal his sentence of three and a half years in prison for evading taxes estimated at more than 28 million euros.

With his conviction on Thursday, Mr. Hoeness became the most prominent catch in the drive in Europe to expose and prosecute tax dodgers. Even amid growing German anxiety over the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, his trial riveted the nation, pitting the appeal of an athletic hero against growing populist anger at the use by the wealthy and powerful of secret Swiss bank accounts and other means of tax avoidance.

Even the normally staid Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted on its website that this was Germany's 'most sensational trial in decades.'

Mr. Hoeness overruled his lawyers, who had said that they would appeal the verdict and sentencing, which sent shock waves through a country that for decades had viewed him as an upstanding sports and business figure.

'Following discussions with my family, I have decided to accept the ruling of the Munich court,' Mr. Hoeness said in a personal statement cited by the German news agency DPA. 'I have asked my lawyers not to appeal. That reflects my understanding of decency, deportment and personal responsibility.'

The Hoeness case was the latest in a series of tax evasion prosecutions against prominent people in Germany and is part of a broader trend in which governments across Europe, strapped for tax revenues, are cracking down on avoidance schemes, especially among the wealthy.

Some 55,000 tax evaders have turned themselves in to the German authorities over the past four years and have paid a total of about €3.5 billion, or about $4.9 billion, in back taxes, according to the German taxpayers' association, quoted by Reuters.

The number of voluntary disclosures reportedly rose fourfold in 2013 from 2012. Some observers have suggested the increase was in part prompted by the case against Mr. Hoeness.

Mr. Hoeness, 62, who grew up as a butcher's son, joined Bayern, long one of Germany's best soccer clubs, when he was 18 years old.

In eight and a half years as a player, he helped the team win three league titles and three European Cups.

In 1974, he was part of the German squad that won the World Cup, but he was essentially knocked out of top competitive soccer when he sustained a grave knee injury in 1975.

That propelled him into the ranks of managers, where his successful record only helped his reputation. In recent years, he was a TV personality, known for his folksy style.

Answering a general appeal made to Germans holding secret Swiss bank accounts, Mr. Hoeness informed the authorities in January 2013 that he held an account with the Swiss bank Vontobel and said that it was used for private speculation in financial markets.

The four-day trial opened on Monday with Mr. Hoeness expressing remorse. He apologized for what he termed his 'wrongdoing.'

But his original confession to evading €3.5 million in taxes was swiftly exposed as a small fraction of his dodges.

By late Monday, the total had climbed to €18.5 million, and after the second day to €27.2 million. When sentence was passed on Thursday, the amount in question was said by the Munich court to be some €28.5 million.

The defendant bowed his head and stared at the floor when the verdict was delivered, his face turning red, according to reporters in what was described as a tense courtroom. He left without commenting to reporters or fans waiting outside.

State prosecutors, who had asked for a five-year sentence, said that they might take Mr. Hoeness to court again if fresh financial information came to light.

Past German tax scandals have enveloped the tennis champion Boris Becker, who was fined €500,000 and sentenced to two years' probation in 2002, and Peter Graf, the late father of the tennis star Steffi Graf. Mr. Graf was sentenced in 1997 to three years and nine months in jail for evading the equivalent of €6.3 million. He was released on good behavior after serving half his term.

More recently, in 2009, the former head of Deutsche Post, Klaus Zumwinkel, was sentenced to two years' probation and paid €1 million in fines.

This year, the drive to expose tax dodgers has caught some more surprising figures, including Alice Schwarzer, Germany's leading feminist, who, like Mr. Hoeness, confessed to holding a Swiss bank account - back to the 1980s, it emerged - and paid about €200,000 in back taxes.

The former publisher and senior editor of the weekly Die Zeit, Theo Sommer, was sentenced to 19 months in jail - commuted to a probation of three years - and fined €20,000 for dodging €649,000 in taxes.

The source of the millions of euros with which Mr. Hoeness apparently engaged in bets on financial markets has remained unclear.

Back in April last year, as reports implicated the soccer star in multimillion-euro trades, even Chancellor Angela Merkel - an avowed soccer fan - expressed her shock. 'Many people in Germany are now disappointed in Uli Hoeness,' her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said then. 'The chancellor is one of those people.'

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