President of Bayern Munich Is Charged With Tax Evasion BERLIN - German prosecutors have charged Uli Hoeness, the president of the soccer juggernaut Bayern Munich, with tax evasion. The charge came after a long investigation into the financial dealings of one of Germany's most storied sports figures. Hoeness helped guide Bayern, the dominant team in German soccer, to the Champions League title this year. Hoeness's announcement in April that he had maintained a bank account in Switzerland for years and used it to evade taxes shattered his image as a straight-talking, upstanding sports hero. Hoeness said the account was strictly for his personal use for trading on the stock market and had no connections to Bayern. Hoeness's lawyers have one month to respond to the charges, a Munich state court said Tuesday. After that, a criminal court that handles financial cases will decide whether to go to trial, dismiss the case, or request more information. A decision is not expected before the end of September, Andrea Titz, a spokeswoman for the Munich court, said in a statement. She refused to talk about the details of the charges, including the amount of money involved, pending the financial court's announcement on how it will proceed. "No details of the charges can be released before the court's decision whether to open the case, particularly given that certain obligations of confidentiality apply to tax evasion cases," Titz said. It has been a year of contrasts for Hoeness, 61, a former national team player who helped West Germany win the 1974 World Cup on its home turf. He has spent the past 30 years helping Bayern Munich build up financial reserves rarely seen in European club soccer. In April, he went public with his story that he had informed the tax authorities about a private bank account he held in Switzerland at the start of the year. Prosecutors then began an investigation and issued a warrant for his arrest. He was released on bail. "Between 2002 and 2006, I really gambled," Hoeness told the German newspaper Die Zeit in an interview in May. Day and night, I traded with sums that today are hard for me to get my head around, they were extreme. It was a kick, pure adrenaline. His revelations, coming in an election year in Germany, stirred a national debate over social justice and equality. Opposition politicians seized on the opportunity to hold up Hoeness, who had close ties to Chancellor Angela Merkel, as an example of her government's leniency toward wealthy tax evaders. The chancellor distanced herself from Hoeness, but Bayern fans circled their wagons around him, chanting, "Uli Hoeness, you are the best!" through the stadium June 1 after the team secured the final jewel in the triple crown of German soccer, the German Cup, after winning the league title and the Champions League. It is the first team in the country to have won all three in a season. Instead of joining in the festivities of beer showers and a series of parades through the streets of Munich in the following weeks, Hoeness stayed largely in the shadows. The team's supervisory board voted unanimously in May to keep him as president, saying at the time that it would address the issue again when more information became available. The club declined Tuesday to comment on the charges. In his most recent remarks on the affair last week, Hoeness credited Bayern fans and the board members for supporting him in the months since he came forward, and he sounded upbeat about the outcome. "We need to wait and see how things develop," Hoeness told public ZDF television last week on the sideline of a friendly between Bayern Munich and Barcelona that carried his name, the Uli Hoeness Cup. I am confident that a satisfactory solution will be found.