<\/p>\n
President of European football champions Bayern Munich, Uli Hoeness has been jailed for three years and six moths for tax evasion by a German court.<\/p>\n
Hoeness admitted defrauding German tax authorities of millions of euros.<\/p>\n
The former World Cup-winning Germany striker, 62, had kept the funds in a secret Swiss bank account.<\/p>\n
His lawyer had argued he should escape punishment because he gave himself up. But judges ruled his confession fell short of full disclosure.<\/p>\n
Hoeness was initially charged with evading 3.5m euros (\u00a32.9m; $4.9m) in taxes but he then admitted to dodging another 15m euros.<\/p>\n
On the day he took the call from a well-wisher tipping him off that he was being investigated for tax fraud, he was having lunch with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. That’s how well-connected he was.<\/p>\n
When the tax scandal broke, he offered his resignation at a Bayern meeting but the fans chanted his name until he broke down in tears. Uli was loved – despite the gambling problem that led to his greater tax problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It finally emerged in court that he owed a total of 27.2m euros.<\/p>\n
On Thursday the court in the southern city of Munich found Hoeness guilty of “seven serious counts of tax evasion”.<\/p>\n
“The voluntary disclosure is not valid with the documents that were presented alone,” the judge said.<\/p>\n
The defence said it would appeal against the sentence. Meanwhile Hoeness will remain free until a final verdict has been handed out.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors had called for a term of five years and six months.<\/p>\n
Bayern Munich fans were gathered outside the court building, holding up banners expressing support for the football boss.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President of European football champions Bayern Munich, Uli Hoeness has been jailed for three years and six moths for tax evasion by a German court. Hoeness admitted defrauding German tax authorities of millions of euros. The former World Cup-winning Germany striker, 62, had kept the funds in a secret Swiss bank account. His lawyer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[115,60],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2669,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions\/2669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}