Marshall then asked Mullens whether he suspected that Ecclestone had “orchestrated”
the robbery.
“It crossed my mind that he may have,” Mullens said. “It also
crossed my mind that a very large number of other people who I had dealings
with professionally and personally may have been involved.
“That’s what happens when you have been subjected to an horrific trauma.
You try to understand why.”
It emerged that in the months following the robbery, Mullens was lent £15m by
Slavica Ecclestone to spend on security after threatening to leave the
country.
“She said, ‘I don’t want you to do that. I want to help you’,”
said Mullens, who stressed that he refused to accept the money as a gift.
Mrs Ecclestone subsequently took out a court order for the repayment of the
loan.
“I have never understood why proceedings were commenced,” Mullens said,
adding that she had later apologised for taking that action.
Ecclestone, Mullens and Bambino are defendants in Constantin Medien’s lawsuit,
which claims that they paid a total of $44m in bribes to German banker
Gerhard Gribkowsky in order to steer the 2005 sale of Formula One to its
current owners CVC Capital Partners.
Constantin claims that Formula One was purposefully undervalued by Gribkowsky,
and that it lost out on a hefty commission as a result.
Ecclestone and Mullens deny the charges, claiming that they paid Gribkowsky to
keep him quiet after he threatened to go to the UK tax authorities and make
false claims regarding Ecclestone’s control of Bambino.
The case continues.