{"id":21057,"date":"2014-02-20T07:30:53","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T12:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=21057"},"modified":"2014-02-20T07:30:53","modified_gmt":"2014-02-20T12:30:53","slug":"judge-says-ecclestone-paid-bribe-red-bull-on-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/judge-says-ecclestone-paid-bribe-red-bull-on-track\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge says Ecclestone paid bribe; Red Bull on track"},"content":{"rendered":"

A London court verdict on Thursday was both good and bad news for F1’s embattled chief executive Bernie Ecclestone.<\/p>\n

\"Bernie-Ecclestone-1\"Constantin Medien’s $140 million damages claim was dismissed by the judge, but Justice Guy Newey announced in his verdict that 83-year-old Briton Ecclestone had been “corrupt”.<\/p>\n

It is a major blow to Ecclestone, who later this year will face jail, and certainly the end of his long reign over the sport, if found similarly guilty of paying a bribe by German prosecutors during a criminal trial.<\/p>\n

“The payments were a bribe,” Thursday’s verdict read, adding that Ecclestone’s agreement with jailed former F1 banker Gerhard Gribkowsky was “corrupt”.<\/p>\n

However, Justice Newey dismissed Constantin’s claim, asserting the German company and former F1 shareholder was “no part of Mr Ecclestone’s purpose” in having paid the bribe.<\/p>\n

“No loss to Constantin has been shown to have been caused by the corrupt arrangement with Dr Gribkowsky,” he said.\u00a0 “That fact is fatal to the claim.”<\/p>\n

But the judge dealt further blows to Ecclestone by saying the 83-year-old was not a “reliable or truthful witness”.<\/p>\n

Ecclestone’s lawyers, however, saw the bright side of the verdict, saying the judge had “completely exonerated” the defendants.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Red Bull’s troubled 2014 campaign seemed finally to get on track on Thursday, when Sebastian Vettel managed dozens of laps in the Renault-powered RB10 in Bahrain.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A London court verdict on Thursday was both good and bad news for F1’s embattled chief executive Bernie Ecclestone. Constantin Medien’s $140 million damages claim was dismissed by the judge, but Justice Guy Newey announced in his verdict that 83-year-old Briton Ecclestone had been “corrupt”. It is a major blow to Ecclestone, who later this …<\/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":[59,3236,5262,5340,4818,129],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21057"}],"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=21057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21058,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21057\/revisions\/21058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}