The German football scene has been shaken by a major scandal. Uli Hoeneß, player, manager and currently president of Bayern Munich during some 40 years, has filed a charge against himself for improper tax deductions. The 61-year-old surrendered himself to the authorities and paid €6 million right away to reduce his possible tax debt. This is a common (and legal) practice in Germany to avoid high fines or even jail. The investigations now focus on a Swiss bank account in Hoeneß's name where reportedly hundreds of millions of euros were deposited. In the beginning, the scandal concerned only Hoeneß and had nothing to do with the football club. However, various German newspapers report that the late Robert Louis-Dreyfus, a football fanatic and the former strongman at Adidas, made a loan of 20 million deutschemarks (€10.2m-$13.3m) to that account in 2000. Hoeneß reportedly used the money for trading on the stock exchange. While the reports said that Hoeneß quickly paid the loan back to Louis-Dreyfus, there was an interesting coincidence. Shortly afterwards, Bayern extended its sponsoring deal with Adidas which became, just one year later, a 10-percent shareholder in the club. Later on, Hoeneß freely admitted that Bayern had been offered a higher price for the stake, reportedly by Nike, but he said that he had preferred a German company as a strategic partner.

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