has generated a number of scandals, some of which have resulted in lawsuits against the magazine. Up to 2001, 40 plaintiffs had brought lawsuits against Titanic. Politician Björn Engholm, for example, received 40,000 Deutsche Mark in compensation, and the magazine incurred 190,000 DM in legal fees. The July 2012 issue of the magazine was banned by a state court in Hamburg due to its front cover being an image of Pope Benedict XVI soiling himself. 2006 FIFA World Cup bribery affair In July 2000, Martin Sonneborn (then Titanic's editor-in-chief) sent hoax bribery faxes to a number of delegates of the FIFA World championship committee. In these letters, he offered the delegates gifts if they showed their support of the German bid for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Leading up to the vote, it had been widely expected that the tournament would take place in South Africa. However, New Zealand's representative, Charlie Dempsey, who had been instructed to vote for South Africa by the Oceania Football Confederation, abstained from voting at the last minute. His vote for South Africa would have brought the tally to 12:12, resulting in FIFA's President Sepp Blatter—who had supported South Africa's bid—having to break the tie. Dempsey was one of the eight members of the executive committee who had received Sonneborn's fax on Wednesday, the night before the vote. In his letter to Dempsey, Sonneborn promised him a cuckoo clock and Black Forest ham in exchange for Dempsey's vote for Germany: Dempsey himself famously stated "This final fax broke my neck." He argued that the pressure from all sides had become too much for him. According to reports by Spiegel magazine in 2015, there allegedly have been less-satirical bribery attempts involving billionaire Robert Louis-Dreyfuss and former German football player Franz Beckenbauer to assure a German victory in the bidding process (see main article). In July 2000, the biggest German tabloid BILD-Zeitung urged its readers to phone Titanic and express their outrage at damaging Germany's reputation through bribery. Titanic recorded those phone calls and published an audio CD with a selection of the funniest of them, called "BILD-Leser beschimpfen Titanic" ("BILD-readers insult Titanic"). The German Football Association threatened Sonneborn with DM 600 million (approx €300 million) in damages, requiring him to swear never again to influence a FIFA decision through the use of a fax machine. In November 2005, Sonneborn published a book about the affair, "Ich