Nasser al-Khelaifi, the chairman of a powerful Qatari sports investment company that owns Paris Saint-Germain, was in secretive negotiations to take over a company accused of paying football officials millions of dollars in bribes, a federal court in New York heard on Tuesday.

The claim was made by Santiago Peña, a former financial executive at the Argentinian marketing company Full Play, as part of testimony in the trial of three former South American football officials accused on multiple bribery counts. Peña is a star US government witness in the sprawling investigation into corruption at Fifa, the sport’s governing body. He has laid out detailed evidence that Full Play paid multimillion-dollar bribes to a group of football officials in exchange for the rights to regional competitions and World Cup qualifiers.

During testimony on Tuesday, Peña revealed that al-Khelaifi, referred to only by his first name and “[the] head of soccer club … Paris Saint-Germain” by defence attorneys, was in negotiations with the owners of Full Play, Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, to buy the company out. Both Hugo and Mariano Jinkis – father and son – have been indicted by US prosecutors on corruption charges, but remain in Argentina.

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Peña said the deal was kept almost entirely confidential within Full Play and only he, the owners and one other finance executive, were aware of the negotiations. The former executive said that once Full Play’s owners had been indicted in the US government investigation, unveiled after a dramatic raid on a hotel in Zurich in May 2015, the deal was abandoned.

“After 27 May, logically, the potential transaction was ended,” Peña told prosecutors during testimony on Monday. He added that he deleted emails relating to the negotiations shortly after the indictments were announced.

A spokesman for Qatar Sports Investments, the Qatari firm chaired by al-Khelaifi, confirmed to the Guardian that the company had examined acquiring a controlling shareholding in Full Play but decided against it “after closer inspection”.

On Tuesday Peña said the takeover would have seen the Qataris obtain 51% of the company, with an option of a further 19%, for $212m. Executives referred to the deal as “the New York Project” – a reference to the 212 area code in Manhattan and the sum being offered. They had been working on negotiations “for more than one year,” Peña said. He added that under the proposed arrangement Hugo and Mariano Jinkis “would continue to operate the company” after the proposed takeover occurred.

Peña, who worked at Full Play between 2009 and 2015, has implicated Hugo and Mariano Jinkis in a series of multimillion-dollar bribe payments. Key to his evidence has been the disclosure of a ledger the prosecution claims shows records of bribe payments made to a group of South American football officials on the region’s governing body, Conmebol.

Peña said he used codewords, mostly car manufacturers’ names, to denote bribe payments made to each of the officials, including defendants Manuel Burga, the former head of the Peruvian football association and Juan Ángel Napout, the Paraguayan former president of Conmebol, who have pleaded not guilty to multiple counts relating to corruption.

Al-Khelaifi is seen as a leading figure in the Gulf state’s push into the international sports world including hosting the 2022 World Cup, and is also the chairman of prominent broadcaster beIN.

Last month he was accused by Swiss prosecutors of bribing the former Fifa secretary general Jérôme Valcke to purchase broadcast rights to World Cup tournaments.