{"id":19705,"date":"2013-10-30T07:00:26","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=19705"},"modified":"2013-10-30T07:00:26","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T11:00:26","slug":"swiss-authorities-open-criminal-probe-against-ecclestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/swiss-authorities-open-criminal-probe-against-ecclestone\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiss authorities open criminal probe against Ecclestone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yet another war front has opened for F1&#8217;s embattled chief executive Bernie Ecclestone.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ngg-singlepic ngg-left alignleft\" style=\"margin: 5px 10px;\" alt=\"Bernie-Ecclestone-3\" src=\"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/gallery\/f1-2013-rif-images\/f1-2013-persons\/Bernie-Ecclestone-3.jpg\" width=\"384\" height=\"256\" \/>As the trial brought by a German media company started in London on Tuesday, 83-year-old Ecclestone was accused of being &#8220;corrupt&#8221; by lawyers for Constantin Medien, who are seeking $171 million in damages.<\/p>\n<p>Not only that, Briton Ecclestone is still waiting to see if German prosecutors are going to push their similar, albeit criminal charges to a trial, relating to the $44 million payment made to Gerhard Gribkowsky, allegedly as a bribe.<\/p>\n<p>And it now emerges that Swiss authorities have opened their own criminal investigation into the same matter relating to the sale of F1&#8217;s commercial rights some years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Following a report in the Financial Times, the Bloomberg news agency quoted a spokesman for the Geneva prosecutor&#8217;s office as saying: &#8220;A criminal investigation has been launched.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The spokesman said the investigation follows a request made by Constantin.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have to establish the veracity of the facts and whether these would constitute a criminal violation,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yet another war front has opened for F1&#8217;s embattled chief executive Bernie Ecclestone. As the trial brought by a German media company started in London on Tuesday, 83-year-old Ecclestone was accused of being &#8220;corrupt&#8221; by lawyers for Constantin Medien, who are seeking $171 million in damages. Not only that, Briton Ecclestone is still waiting to &#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":[59,3236,5262,5340,2638],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19705"}],"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=19705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19706,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19705\/revisions\/19706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}