{"id":16223,"date":"2012-06-22T07:37:10","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T11:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=16223"},"modified":"2012-06-30T07:39:16","modified_gmt":"2012-06-30T11:39:16","slug":"ecclestone-in-crisis-as-bribery-affair-develops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/ecclestone-in-crisis-as-bribery-affair-develops\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecclestone in crisis as bribery affair develops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The reinvigorated F1 bribery affair has raised questions not only about the viability of the sport&#8217;s planned floatation, but about whether Bernie Ecclestone will lose his job or even face jail in Germany.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Will Ecclestone go to Hockenheim?&#8221; the Die Welt newspaper, obviously musing a potential arrest now that former F1 banker Gerhard Gribkowsky has confirmed the F1 chief executive&#8217;s payments to him were indeed bribes, wondered.<\/p>\n<p>Gribkowsky faces years in jail, and so the question now is whether the Munich prosecutors will also go after 81-year-old Ecclestone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll wait and see how things develop,&#8221; the Briton told Welt.\u00a0 &#8220;Now I&#8217;m getting on with my job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutor spokesman Thomas Steinkraus-Koch told Bild newspaper: &#8220;Since 2011 an investigation of Bernie Ecclestone has been underway.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For now we are now awaiting the court&#8217;s verdict in the trial of Gerhard Gribkowsky.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That judgement is expected within days.<\/p>\n<p>German lawyer Sewarion Kirkitadze told Bild that Ecclestone ultimately face a prison sentence of &#8220;up to ten years&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He should also expect the prosecutor to prepare an international arrest warrant and an extradition request.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For all the trouble, which Ecclestone said is based on Gribkowsky&#8217;s new lies to &#8220;save himself&#8221;, the diminutive Briton is threatening to sue.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will see if I take action against Gribkowsky.\u00a0 It&#8217;s early days, let&#8217;s have a look,&#8221; Ecclestone is quoted as saying by the F1 business journalist Christian Sylt.<\/p>\n<p>The F1 supremo, who insisted he is &#8220;not at all&#8221; worried the affair threatens his job or the F1 floatation, told Bloomberg news agency: &#8220;I don&#8217;t know what they (the prosecutors) would charge me for.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The reinvigorated F1 bribery affair has raised questions not only about the viability of the sport&#8217;s planned floatation, but about whether Bernie Ecclestone will lose his job or even face jail in Germany. &#8220;Will Ecclestone go to Hockenheim?&#8221; the Die Welt newspaper, obviously musing a potential arrest now that former F1 banker Gerhard Gribkowsky has &#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":[3],"tags":[59,5262,5340,2638,3861],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16223"}],"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=16223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16224,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16223\/revisions\/16224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}