Former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone will not go to prison. The 92-year-old man was in fact sentenced to seventeen months in prison, after pleading guilty this Thursday in London to tax fraud, having failed to declare more than 400 million pounds (473 million euros) of assets held in Singapore. Bernie Ecclestone has also agreed to pay more than 652 million pounds (nearly 755 million euros) to settle his dispute with the British tax authorities.
He had initially pleaded not guilty in August 2022, but he finally admitted the facts with which he is accused during a hearing this Thursday at Southwark Crown Court in London, a month before the opening of his trial scheduled to last until at six weeks. “I plead guilty,” said the British billionaire, dressed in a dark suit and gray tie. Justice accuses him of not having declared a trust in Singapore in 2015 with an account containing 650 million dollars, or around 400 million pounds sterling at the time (473 million euros).
An investigation of the “complex and international” fic
According to prosecutor Richard Wright, Bernie Ecclestone had given a “false or misleading” answer by claiming that he had no undeclared trusts, either in the UK or abroad. “He now recognizes that taxes must be paid,” he added. The British prosecutor’s office had authorized the indictment of the former F1 boss following a tax investigation presented as “complex and international”.
Although the threshold to justify a prison sentence was reached, Judge Simon Bryan opted for a suspended sentence, taking into account in particular the age of the defendant and the absence of a previous conviction. Bernie Ecclestone’s lawyer, Christine Montgomery, told the magistrate that her client “bitterly regrets the facts which led to this criminal trial”.
A fortune estimated at more than 2.5 billion pounds
This is not the first time that Bernie Ecclestone has been in trouble with the law. In 2014, he obtained an interruption of his corruption trial in Germany, paying $100 million. Bernie Ecclestone was prosecuted for having paid 44 million dollars (31.8 million euros) in 2006 and 2007 to German banker Gerhard Gribkowsky, who worked for the Bavarian public bank Bayern LB, with a view to concluding the sale of the rights to F1 to the investment fund CVC Capital Partners. Bernie Ecclestone reigned supreme over F1 for almost 40 years, until January 2017.
He then left his position as manager of the elite of world motorsport after being fired by the new holder of the commercial rights to the discipline, the American group Liberty Media. Short-lived racing driver in the late 1950s then boss of the Brabham team, the British businessman, whose fortune was estimated by the magazine Forbes at more than 2.5 billion pounds, is widely considered to be the architect of the transformation of F1, which has become a lucrative activity under his rule. In particular, at the end of the 1970s, he was one of the pioneers in the marketing of television broadcasting rights for sporting events.