“What I paid him was a very small amount, what I call an insurance policy,”
Ecclestone told a hearing at the High Court in London, calling it “quite
a cheap insurance policy”.
He said there was no link to a deal in which CVC paid BayernLB $830m for a
47pc stake in Formula One. “This issue was nothing to do with anyone
except Gribkowsky and myself, nobody else.”
Ecclestone has run Formula One for four decades, turning it into a
money-spinner with annual revenue of around $2bn generated by races held
around the world watched by hundreds of millions of TV viewers.
A German court is due to decide next year whether Ecclestone himself should
stand trial on bribery charges linked to the Gribkowsky payment. Ecclestone
denies any wrongdoing.
Giving evidence in the damages case brought by Constantin Medien, Ecclestone
repeated previous statements that he was being put under pressure by
Gribkowsky who he feared would make false claims about his tax affairs.
He denied misleading Formula One board members including Martin Sorrell, chief
executive of advertising group WPP , and Peter Brabeck, chairman of Nestle,
about payments to Gribkowsky.
“It wasn’t the slightest concern of theirs,” he said. “I paid
him because I was being I said ‘shaken down’,” he added, saying this
was what he had told the Formula One directors in 2011 after Gribkowsky had
been arrested.
Constantin is the successor to German media firm and former shareholder EM.TV.
It says it missed out on a share of the proceeds had the sale price for the
stake exceeded $1.05bn.
It argues that Ecclestone favoured a sale to CVC because it planned to keep
him on as CEO of a business which he continues to run as a hands-on chief
executive.
Questioned repeatedly in court about newspaper reports quoting him after the
Gribkowsky arrest, Ecclestone said: “Most of these journalists should
be working closely with, what’s his name, Jeffrey Archer,” referring to
the best-selling author and former Member of Parliament.
Source: Reuters/Press Association. Edited by Denise Roland.