A large portion of missing files from Dr Helmut Kohl's last six years as chancellor have turned up in the archives of a conservative German foundation, it was reported yesterday.
The deputy director of the Konrad Adenauer foundation archives, Mr Hans-Otto Kleinmann, told a German newspaper that former chancellery minister, Mr Friedrich Bohl, had handed over a large number of files to the foundation.
"Along with files from his time in parliament, Bohl also gave us files from his office in the chancellery," he said. Ninety per cent of the files are among those the German government said had been destroyed just before Dr Kohl left office in 1998.
The government filed suit on Wednesday against an unnamed defendant for the disappearance of files.
Special investigator Mr Burkhard Hirsch said there had been "a massive destruction of documents, without any judicial justification," in the 1990s.
The files included the sale to French oil group Elf of the Leuna refinery in eastern Germany - linked to a money-raising scandal involving Dr Kohl's party - the sale of German tanks to Saudi Arabia, helicopters to Canada and aircraft to Thailand.
Mr Bohl said last month he was ready to take "political responsibility" for the loss of documents, while denying they had been removed or destroyed on his orders.
No comment was available from the foundation or the government. If the report is true, it will come as a relief to Dr Kohl, who denies he destroyed the documents, which amounted to around two-thirds of the chancellery's records, before he left office.