Frankfurt – German prosecutors have managed to access a potentially explosive encrypted file in connection with the German 2006 World Cup affair which could lead to new insight.
A prosecution spokeswoman on Thursday confirmed a report from German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) which said authorities had managed to read the file named "Complex Jack Warner." The spokeswoman however did not give further details, citing the ongoing investigation.
Frankfurt prosecutors are investigating several members of the 2006 World Cup organizing committee on suspicion of tax evasion in connection with a dubious payment of 6.7 million euros (7.2 million dollars) for a World Cup gala event which never took place.
As part of the probe which started 12 months ago, e-mails and other documents were seized at the Frankfurt headquarters of the German Football Federation (DFB).
The DFB said it made attempts over several months to access the file, named after now disgraced former FIFA top official Jack Warner, but eventually could not justify paying a six-digit sum to gain access to data with unclear content.
The DFB handed over the file to the authorities last month and it took only 24 days for the authorities to access it, the SZ report said. Prosecutors recently accused the DFB of not fully cooperating in the affair, an accusation the federation has denied.
Warner could be a key figure as a draft of a contract between World Cup organizers and him, dated just days before Germany were elected 2006 hosts, has emerged during the affair.
The former Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf) president and former Trinidad and Tobago minister of national security is currently fighting extradaition from the Caribean nation to the USA to face charges of corruption in connection with the Fifa bribery scandal.
An investigation by the USA Federal Bereu of Investigations (FBI) in 2015 discovered that the South African Football Association (Safa) had paid $10 million to Concacaf in 2008, while Warner was at the helm. Safa subsequently stated that the money was in no way linked to the 2010 World Cup and that the payment was a contribution to football development on the Concacaf region.