Instead, said Ecclestone, Tamara got carried away: “She thought, ‘I’m a
superstar, I’m rich and now I’ve got to show I’m rich and a superstar.'”
Despite owning 200 Hermes handbags and having a turntable set into the drive
of her £45 million London home to save her the trouble of turning her
Ferrari around, Tamara is just a girl, like any of her age, who is normal
around the house and loves shoes and clothes, he said.
“You know, she’ll be in the kitchen like everyone else. Yes, for sure,
she goes and buys loads of shoes and bloody clothes. Unnecessary. Completely
unnecessary. One wonders, and this is not in her defence – how many other
girls her age would do the same if they could?”
Rumours of a £1 million bath built to Tamara’s specification with crystal
brought from the Amazon were quashed. “It cost nothing like that,”
said the twice-married business magnate.
His youngest daughter, 22-year-old Petra, hit the headlines earlier this year
when it emerged that she had spent £12 million on her wedding without
telling him. She lives in a £54 million apartment in Los Angeles, which
changed hands for cash.
The Forbes World’s
Billionaires List of 2011 ranked Ecclestone as the 4th
richest person in the United Kingdom, with an estimated fortune of £2.7.
billion, an increase of £128 million from the previous year.
It was revealed last month during a fraud case in a German court that
Ecclestone had put £3 billion of the money he made from his ownership of
Formula One’s commercial rights, in to a trust registered in the name of his
Croatian ex-wife Slavica Radic. The couple divorced three years ago after 24
years of marriage.
During the case against Gerhard Gribowsky, a banker, it emerged that
Ecclestone paid him $44 million because he feared the banker was about to
tell HM Revenue and Customs that it was Ecclestone who controlled the trust,
called Bambino Holdings, which would have made him liable to pay tax on it.
“The kids have had access to the money,” Ecclestone said. “The
idea was that they’d buy super-quality property, property that would be long
term, for their kids and everything else. Didn’t happen. They haven’t done
that. So they’ve had access to money which they’ve spent.”
In the interview, Eccleston also defended his decision to include Bahrain in
the Formula One calendar, for which he receives a reported £25 million a
year from the Emirates’ ruling Al Khalifa family.
The violent suppresssion of anti-government unrest led to the postponement and
then the cancellation of the race. This week it was announced that Bahrain
is back on Formula One’s 2012 calendar, scheduled for April.
Human rights organisations are still protesting about the treatment of medical
personnel imprisoned for ministering to wounded protesters.
“The people I’ve met there are lovely people,” he said.
Ecclestone questioned whether the reports of doctors being jailed showed the
full picture.
“Do you know that? Do you actually know that?” he said. “If
that’s right, it’s wrong. Obviously. Doctors are doctors. They’re there to
help people. it doesn’t matter who it is they’re helping. We have been
assured that this is not what’s happening. In fact they had a report made,
allegedly independent. What did the report say? Yes, there were instances or
whatever, but… I wanted to go there. I was happy to go. I’d like to go
into the prison or the hospital or whatever and ask: ‘What actually
happened?'”