Burdened By Tax Questions Was Graf Aware Of Her Father’s Murky Tax-Evasion Schemes?
Was Steffi Graf an innocent victim of her father’s murky tax-evasion schemes? Was Germany’s tennis star ignorant of the machinations? How much did she know?
Germans seem to be about evenly divided on the issue of Graf’s innocence, as the tax affair slowly unravels.
In rare television interviews, Graf, 26, has said that she thought her financial and tax affairs were being handled by experts and that she never really knew how much she was worth.
Her father and his tax adviser are in jail, on the orders of a judge who thought they might flee the country to avoid prosecution, and the investigation is spreading beyond the tennis star’s circle.
A commission is investigating whether local politicians gave Graf privileges and allowed her to pay lower taxes.
In a nation with one of the heaviest tax burdens, where high income earners can end up paying more than 50 percent in taxes, such dispensations would be highly unpopular.
The case has contributed to questions about other prominent Germans, especially athletes, and their tax bills.
“The affair has caused deep anger about special tax regulations for stars, especially since normal people pay fines just for being late filing tax returns,” wrote the weekly Die Woche.
Some news media defended Graf. The conservative Bunte asked whether Germany had become ungrateful and forgotten everything Graf had done for the country.
Others were less forgiving.
“Once built up, Steffi Graf is now being dismantled. She has disappointed expectations that she did not raise herself. She is paying the price for having to be someone else than herself. She was used: by the greed of her father and the greed of the market,” Die Woche said.
A survey conducted for Die Woche in October showed Germans evenly split on whether Graf knew about the reported tax-evasion schemes.
But two-thirds still thought she was good for Germany’s image, and three-quarters thought she didn’t belong in jail. A majority considered her father the main culprit in the tax affair.
Her father, Peter Graf, has been in investigative custody since Aug. 2. His tax adviser, Joachim Eckardt, was arrested in September. Steffi Graf was interrogated twice.
Peter Graf has never enjoyed a good reputation in Germany, where he is seen as a greedy, ambitious, domineering father, who drove his daughter hard. Accusations have come from former associates that he also abused Steffi, beating and kicking her during practice.
Since his arrest, stories have described Peter Graf carrying away large sums of cash in plastic bags - appearance money given under the table to his daughter.
Steffi’s earnings from sponsorship deals were allegedly spread through several shell companies based in the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles, according to leaked details of the investigation.
Prosecutors believe that more than $35 million of Steffi’s earnings were shunted into foreign accounts.
Unlike many other German sports stars, Steffi did not move her official residence to a tax haven abroad. Formula One champion Michael Schumacher lives in Monte Carlo, tennis star Michael Stich in neighboring Austria. Boris Becker, another tennis star, only recently moved his official residence from Monte Carlo back to Germany.
Authorities recently cracked down on a number of soccer players who used a loophole to live and pay lower taxes in neighboring Belgium while playing for German clubs.
Some media reports have said that Graf was given tax allowances after her family hinted several years ago that she might move abroad. Lawmakers in her native state of Baden-Wuerttemberg are investigating whether local authorities allowed the Grafs to pay a lump sum in taxes, far below the amount due on the star’s real earnings.
During her career, Graf is believed to have earned more than $120 million.
Graf, who currently shares the No. 1 ranking with Monica Seles, won the French and U.S. opens and Wimbledon this summer, then skipped several tournaments and lost in the first round in Brighton last month.