Wolfgang Niersbach denies bribery claim against German FA

Germany's football chief has rejected media claims that its 2006 World Cup bid committee bribed FIFA officials to win the vote for the tournament.

German Football Association (DFB) president Wolfgang Niersbach, who served on the committee, on Saturday denied the claims made by Der Spiegel magazine a day earlier.

The German magazine alleged a slush fund had been set up for the committee to pay bribes to FIFA officials in order to help land the tournament for Germany in 2000.

"I can rule that out categorically," Niersbach said on the DFB website.

"I can assure that in relation to the bidding and awarding of the 2006 World Cup there were no 'slush funds' at the DFB, the bidding committee or the later organising committee."

Asked whether there was a votes-for-cash deal at the FIFA election in 2000, Niersbach said: "Certainly not. I can assure all football fans. Even Der Spiegel did not offer any proof."

Earlier on Saturday, another former member of the 2006 organising committee, Fedor Radmann, also rejected the allegations.

"The bid committee never bribed anyone," Radmann told Sky Sports News in Germany. "I am prepared to say that under oath. We bought no vote."

On Friday the DFB said its own investigation had found no wrongdoing in the process of being awarded the 2006 World Cup, but said it was investigating a payment of £4.93m from the committee to FIFA for a cultural programme during the 2006 World Cup and whether it was used as intended.

Der Spiegel claimed this payment was a return of a loan paid to the bid committee by the late Adidas CEO Robert Louis-Dreyfus to help it set up the alleged slush fund, a claim also rejected by Niersbach.

FIFA was plunged into the biggest crisis of its 111-year history in May, when 14 football officials and sports marketing executives were indicted in the United States on bribery, money laundering and wire fraud charges involving more than £100m in payments.

Meanwhile on Saturday, Switzerland's Attorney General Michael Lauber suggested that an investigation into alleged corruption at soccer's Swiss-based governing body, FIFA, could take five years.

"Realistically, in all big investigations, longer than five years is bad," Michael Lauber said in an SRF radio interview. "It always depends on how the parties to the investigations work with the attorney general."

His office is investigating various strands of corruption claims involving FIFA, including against president Sepp Blatter and into the soccer body's awarding of the 2018 and 2022 tournaments to Russia and Qatar, but Lauber said the OAG was currently not investigating the bidding for the 2006 World Cup.