Pole position again for the great survivor of Formula One
BERNIE Ecclestone is not God, but regrettably nobody appears to have broken the news to him yet. He often claims he could have prevented the recession. He once came up with the idea of enlivening Formula 1 races by sprinkling the track with artificial rain. This is a man who covets control not just of the entire global financial apparatus, but of the weather. So his latest act of bravado will have startled nobody.
This week the head of Formula 1 managed to extricate himself from a rather irksome court case in Munich by paying a “sum” of £60-million. The charge for which he was indicted? Bribery. Yes, Bernie Ecclestone got off a bribery rap — for which he could have faced 10 years in prison— by paying to have the case dropped.
Were there a prosecutable offence called aggravated irony, Ecclestone would surely have been back in the dock before August was out. Yet there is a certain seductive circularity to Ecclestone’s internal logic: akin, perhaps, to an arsonist escaping prison by reaching for the matches and burning down the courtroom he was due to be tried in, or a kidnapper forcing a mistrial by bundling the entire jury into the back of his van and driving them off to an isolated farmhouse.
It is important to remember that no guilt is implied by the settlement. Nor is it particularly special — thousands of cases are ended by similar means (if not similar sums) in Germany every year. For his part, Ecclestone insisted that he would have been acquitted anyway — although when the man you are suspected of bribing, a businessman called Gerhard Gribkowsky, is serving eight years in prison for accepting that very bribe, presumably things were a trifle more complex than he was letting on.
But as it stands he is free to go, which is just as well, because from the sound of things, the four-month trial has taken a horrific toll.
“This trial has been going on for two days a week,” he complained afterwards. “I’ve been working weekends to catch up with what I’ve been missing.”
And whatever your views on the case itself, the court in Munich should be commended for its compassion in reuniting Ecclestone with his Sunday morning lie-ins.
Condemnation has been swift, not least from the German press. Then again, those guys always had it in for him. They still haven’t forgiven Ecclestone for apparently praising Hitler in an interview a few years ago, describing him as a man who “got things done”.
By contrast, the man himself will be delighted not merely at his goldplated evasion of justice, but at the vindication of his own philosophy, the one shining principle that has guided his entire career to date: that everything has its price.
And so Formula 1’s great escapologist lives to fight another scrape. How far, one wonders, will he go? He is, after all, 83 years old. Before long, the tall shadow of the Grim Reaper will doubtless emerge behind him. And when it does, it would be no surprise if Ecclestone turned around, reached for his cheque-book and, with a loud, affected sigh, barked: “All right, then. How much?” — © The Daily Telegraph, London