{"id":13893,"date":"2011-10-10T08:29:12","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T12:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=13893"},"modified":"2011-10-10T08:29:12","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T12:29:12","slug":"witness-backs-ecclestones-blackmail-claim-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/witness-backs-ecclestones-blackmail-claim-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Witness backs Ecclestone&#8217;s blackmail claim &#8211; report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A witness in the forthcoming trial of former F1 banker Gerhard Gribkowsky reportedly supports Bernie Ecclestone&#8217;s claims.<\/p>\n<p>The F1 chief executive insists he only paid millions to jailed Gribkowsky amid the sale of the sport&#8217;s commercial rights some years ago because he was effectively blackmailed.<\/p>\n<p>But Ecclestone, 80, has reportedly remained under investigation by the Munich prosecutors as some paddock regulars wonder how the indefatigable Briton could ever be blackmailed and for such a huge amount of money.<\/p>\n<p>Der Spiegel news magazine, however, will report on Monday that a female former colleague provided Gribkowsky with a document showing Ecclestone&#8217;s links with Bambino, his offshore family trust.<\/p>\n<p>Ecclestone, to appear as a witness at the trial, had claimed in July that Gribkowsky &#8220;threatened that he was going to say that I was running it (the trust)&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He was shaking me down and I didn&#8217;t want to take a risk,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Spiegel claims Ecclestone&#8217;s explanation is backed by the female witness who told investigators that she showed Gribkowsky the offending document in 2004.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was scared,&#8221; the report quotes Ecclestone as telling investigators, who have reportedly not found the document.\u00a0 Gribkowsky denies its existence.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A witness in the forthcoming trial of former F1 banker Gerhard Gribkowsky reportedly supports Bernie Ecclestone&#8217;s claims. The F1 chief executive insists he only paid millions to jailed Gribkowsky amid the sale of the sport&#8217;s commercial rights some years ago because he was effectively blackmailed. But Ecclestone, 80, has reportedly remained under investigation by the &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[2120,3],"tags":[59,5262,5340,2638],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13894,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893\/revisions\/13894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}