Former German football federation president Theo Zwanziger believes Swiss court documents indicate $250,000 was paid to Oceania official Charles Dempsey on the eve of the vote in July 2000 in which Germany won the right to stage the 2006 World Cup. A court document in a trial of executives from the collapsed Swiss sports marketing company ISL show the sum was transferred to an anonymous recipient marked only as E16, according to a report published on Tuesday in Germany's Bild newspaper.

Zwanziger has presented reporters from Bild with the document in which it is suggested that former FIFA executive committee member Dempsey, the then Oceania confederation president from New Zealand, received the money as a bribe. Zwanziger has written "Dempsey!" next to the payment made on July 5, 2000. Next to a further transfer of $250,000 made a month earlier in a list of payments from ISL, Zwanziger has again written "Dempsey?", but with a question mark instead of an exclamation mark, according to the document from 2012 published by Bild. In the final round of voting for the 2006 World Cup on July 6, 2000, Dempsey, who died in 2008 at the age of 87, ignored the reported Oceania confederation instruction to vote for South Africa and abstained, allowing Germany to win a 12-11 vote against South Africa.