Years After Settling Bribery Charges for $10,000,000, F1 Meglomaniac Bernie Ecclestone Gears Up for Brutal Trial After Denying Fraud Accusations

If you search for Bernie Ecclestone online, you’ll find many stories on the 92-year-old’s alleged illegal actions. Ecclestone is one of the UK’s richest men, who effectively set up Formula 1 as we know it. In short, a commercial boss of the sport as he signed all of the deals that made the sport as successful as it is today. However, he is also in the centre of many alleged tax frauds, including a fraud case of over £400m in foreign assets. 

Earlier, in 2008, he was also accused of paying a German banker, Gerhard Gribkowsky €33m ($44m) ‘to ensure that a company he favored could buy a stake in F1’. However, the F1 tycoon denied the charges, stating he was blackmailed and did it only to remain in charge of the sport. After more than three months of trial, the German court freed him from charges in August 2014, as the case reached- ‘neither guilty nor innocent’ in exchange for $100m. In 2022, 8 years later, the Ex-F1 boss again found himself in a trial after being accused of hiding over £400 ($650m) million in a trust in Singapore.

Chief Crown Prosecutor Andrew Penhale said last year: “The CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] has reviewed a file of evidence from HMRC [Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs] and has authorized a charge against Bernard Ecclestone of fraud by false representation in respect of his failure to declare to HMRC the existence of assets held overseas believed to be worth in excess of £400 million ($475 million).”

However, even this time, Ecclestone denied the charges on April 19, 2023, and formally entered the not guilty plea on Tuesday, June 7, 2023. But the prosecutors allege that Ecclestone acted “dishonestly” and “thereby intending to make a gain” or “cause loss to another or expose another to a risk of loss made a representation to officers of HMRC which was, and which you knew was or might have been, untrue or misleading”.

Read More: $3.3 Billion F1 Tycoon Bernie Ecclestone Gets Real About His Glamorous Life in the Swinging Sixties

This has been an ongoing saga, with Ecclestone making rounds around the court since the reports of the alleged fraud first surfaced in July 2022. When will he face the trial?

Will Bernie Ecclestone go free again?

In 2014, when the German court ruled Ecclestone free under an existing provision in German law, Former Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, criticized the use of the loophole in the Ecclestone case. She said it was “not just bad taste – it’s really insolent”. Because ‘it allowed rich people to go free, whereas the less well-heeled could face prison.’ And Now, 8 years later, the rich man is in the middle of another huge fraud.

However, wearing a dark suit and dark glasses, Ecclestone entered London’s Southwark Crown Court again to formally plead not guilty to fraud between July 2013 and October 2016. He’s already denied the charges last summer stating that he had set up “only a single trust” in favor of his three daughters and that he was “not the settler nor beneficiary of any trust in or outside the U.K.”

Watch this story: The Best F1 Themed Movies

The former head of F1, Bernie Ecclestone, will face trial in November following a worldwide investigation by Britain’s tax office into his finances.