Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone has been indicted on a bribery charge by German prosecutors after he paid a disgraced banker to avoid a tax investigation.
The charge relates to a $44m (£29m) payment to a German banker, Gerhard Gribkowsky of Bayern Landesbank, which was linked to the sale of a stake in F1.
Mr Ecclestone said he had paid Mr Gribkowsky to avoid a UK tax inquiry into the sale of Formula 1 in 2006, but denied the payments were bribes.
The 83-year-old F1 chief executive and commercial rights holder said he paid the money because Gribkowsky had threatened to blackmail him.
Mr Gribkowsky was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail after a trial in Munich last year.
Speaking to the Financial Times on Wednesday Mr Ecclestone said: ‘I have just spoken to my lawyers and they have received an indictment. It’s being translated into English.’
Asked how he responded to the indictment, he told
AutoSport: ‘We are defending it properly. It will be an interesting case. It’s a pity it’s happened.’
Mr Ecclestone said it was ‘inevitable’ that the indictment had been served.
‘If someone wants to sue you, they can do it and you have to defend it,’ he said.
Gribkowsky was in charge of managing the sale of regional bank BayernLB’s 48 per cent stake in Formula 1 to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners in In 2006.
He said prosecution claims he had corruptly received $41.4m (£26.6m) in bank commissions, and a large payment via a family trust from Mr Ecclestone, were ‘essentially true’.
Mr Eccleston claimed Gribowsky threated to make trouble for him with the Inland Revenue about the Bambino Holdings trust fund set up for ex-wife Slavica and daughters Tamara and Petra.
‘The only alternative was that the British tax authorities followed a case that would have been very expensive for me,’ said Mr Ecclestone at the time. The tax risk would have exceeded £2billion. I paid him to keep calm and not to do silly things.’
In a recent interview Ecclestone spoke about the prospect of jail but was adamant: ‘I am not guilty of anything except being got at. But if I get sent to jail, I will have to deal with it. I don’t think I will like it very much. But you have to get on with things.’
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