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Former St. Pauli player admits taking match-fixing bribes

A former striker at Bundesliga club St. Pauli has admitted to pocketing more than €100,000 ($134,000) in bribes to fix five matches in 2008, according to a media report.

Published: 4 January 2011 14:20 CET
Former St. Pauli player admits taking match-fixing bribes
Photo: DPA

The weekly magazine Stern cited Rene Schnitzler as saying in an interview that he had received the cash to manipulate five away matches during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 seasons when the Hamburg outfit were still in the second division.

He said an agent named “Paul” handed him the money to fix the games, but denied actually doing so.

According to Stern, “Paul” is a Dutch man called Paul Rooij. The magazine

cites documents from prosecutors showing that Rooij placed several hefty bets

in Asia on suspected fixed matches.

Rooij is also thought to have links to several of the alleged ringleaders on trial in Germany accused of fixing more than 30 matches across Europe in what is believed to be European football’s biggest fraud scandal.

Schnitzler added that he was addicted to gambling. “Since the age of 18, there has scarcely been a day I have not gambled,” he told the magazine’s latest edition.

St. Pauli came ninth in the second division in the 2007-2008 season when one of the games in question took place. The four other games took place in the following season when the club came eighth.

They won promotion to the top flight last season, coming second in the league. They are currently 15th in the Bundesliga, just above the drop zone.

St Pauli won one of the five matches in question, drew one and lost three. Schnitzler played the full 90 minutes in only one match, was a non-playing substitute in two and came off the bench for 15 minutes in another. In one of the suspect matches, he did not play at all.

A spokesman for the club, Christian Bönig, said he was “shocked, but not totally surprised” by the revelations.

The club was aware the player had difficulties, had tried to help him but “he would not let himself be helped,” Bönig told rolling news channel N24.

AFP/mry

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CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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