![\"Bernie-Ecclestone-1\"](\"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/gallery\/f1-2014-rif-images\/f1-2014-persons\/Bernie-Ecclestone-1.jpg\")
The corruption charges, playing out in a dramatic Munich trial, could end the 83-year-old Briton’s long reign over the sport and even see him put in jail.<\/p>\nThe man jailed for accepting Bernie Ecclestone’s alleged bribes depicted the F1 ‘supremo’ on Tuesday as someone desperate to cling to power.<\/p>\n
The corruption charges, playing out in a dramatic Munich trial, could end the 83-year-old Briton’s long reign over the sport and even see him put in jail.<\/p>\n
Gerhard Gribkowsky, formerly in charge of the state-controlled Munich bank BayernLB, is the star witness, and on Tuesday he backed prosecutors’ claims that Ecclestone paid up to influence the sale of F1’s commercial rights.<\/p>\n
“This role (of F1 chief executive) is his life.\u00a0 Of course he wanted to keep it,” Gribkoswky, jailed for eight and a half years for accepting $44 million, is quoted by German reports as having told the court.<\/p>\n
He said that Ecclestone had once said he would rather “die in a puddle of fuel” than lose his post in control of formula one — an alleged statement that was immediately disputed by the diminutive Briton’s lawyers.<\/p>\n
Gribkowsky, however, depicted Ecclestone as someone determined to keep running F1, operating in the sport as requiring others to “have no other gods before me”.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Gribkowsky did not deny Ecclestone’s defence that he was being put under pressure over his personal British tax affairs.<\/p>\n
Ecclestone says that is the only reason he paid the 56-year-old German.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t have anything concrete (about his tax affairs),” Gribkowsky told the court.\u00a0 “It was mainly nuisance value.”<\/p>\n
He revealed that he was also questioned just weeks ago about Ecclestone’s tax affairs by the British authorities.<\/p>\n
“I told them what I told this court,” said Gribkowsky.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t have any inside knowledge but I used the issue at the time to put pressure on Ecclestone to make him settle litigation over formula one,” he added.<\/p>\n
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