FIFA has insisted that audio files from a meeting in Mexico City do exist amid allegations that president Gianni Infantino asked for them to be deleted.
A report published by Welt am Sonntag on Thursday claimed that Infantino is facing a provisional 90-day suspension from FIFA's Ethics Committee, with the German media outlet claiming to have seen an internal email chain at world football's governing body suggesting he had ordered recordings of a council meeting held last month to be destroyed.
According to the report, the meeting at FIFA's latest Congress between May 9 and 10 included "a conspiracy to oust" ex-auditing and compliance chief Domenico Scala, who resigned from his post on May 14 in protest against reforms that he believed empower the FIFA Council at the expense of the independence of committees.
However, in a statement released later on Thursday, FIFA said: "In accordance with standard practice, all official FIFA meetings - including Council meetings - are recorded and archived. This was the case for the meeting in Mexico City in question.
"The email exchange that makes mention of the deletion of audio files refers to a copy of the original audio file of the meeting that was improperly stored on a local drive.
"This mention does not refer to the officially archived audio file. That file exists and is properly saved at FIFA."
