Frankfurt's state prosecutor will look into bribery allegations concerning the 2006 soccer World Cup after a magazine report suggested a slush fund had been used to buy votes for the German bid in 2000, an official said Monday.

Der Spiegel magazine reported Friday that Germany's bid committee had tapped into a slush fund of 6.7 million euros ($7.6 million) to buy votes at world soccer's governing body, FIFA.

"We have initiated a monitoring process," said Nadja Niesen, spokeswoman for the Frankfurt state prosecutor's ­office.

The monitoring process is not a ­formal investigation and will determine whether such a step is necessary.

Der Spiegel reported the slush fund had been set up with 6.7 million euros loaned by late adidas CEO Robert Louis-Dreyfus for Germany's World Cup bid committee to pay bribes to FIFA ­officials in order to help land the tournament for Germany.

It said those aware of the slush fund had included Franz Beckenbauer, head of the 2006 organizing committee, and Wolfgang Niersbach, the current president of the German Football Association (DFB), who was a vice-president of the committee.

Niersbach, Beckenbauer and the DFB have vehemently rejected the allegations as "groundless" and have said the magazine provided no evidence to back up its claims.

The 2006 tournament is fondly ­remembered by Germans as a "summer fairy tale" because of the feel-good atmosphere it created across the country, with millions of fans on the streets celebrating daily.

"The summer fairy tale is not destroyed because I am saying here again: There were no slush funds, there was no vote purchase," Niersbach told reporters on Monday.

"We entered the competition with legal means and we won it with legal means in Zurich on July 6, 2000, for us, for Germany, for German soccer," he said at an event in Dortmund for a newly constructed German soccer museum.

The DFB has said that its own investigation had found no wrongdoing in the 2006 World Cup process, but it was ­investigating whether a payment of 6.7 million euros from the committee to FIFA for a cultural program was used as intended.

"This money transfer from our organizing committee to FIFA is currently being investigated internally by the control committee in charge. We also asked a renowned international commercial law firm to investigate," Niersbach said.

FIFA was plunged into the biggest crisis of its 111-year history in May, when 14 soccer officials and sports marketing executives were indicted in the US on bribery, money laundering and wire fraud charges involving more than $150 million in payments.