{"id":22427,"date":"2014-07-02T06:50:42","date_gmt":"2014-07-02T10:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=22427"},"modified":"2014-07-02T06:50:42","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T10:50:42","slug":"witness-gives-ecclestone-good-day-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/witness-gives-ecclestone-good-day-in-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Witness gives Ecclestone good day in court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bernie Ecclestone&#8217;s defence got a boost on Tuesday, as the corruption trial continued in Munich.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ngg-singlepic ngg-left alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/gallery\/f1-2014-rif-images\/f1-2014-persons\/Bernie-Ecclestone-1.jpg\" alt=\"Bernie-Ecclestone-1\" width=\"445\" height=\"296\" \/>If found guilty of having bribed the jailed former F1 banker Gerhard Gribkowsky, the sport&#8217;s chief executive will certainly lose his job, and probably also be jailed.<\/p>\n<p>But his defence &#8211; that Gribkowsky blackmailed him &#8211; got a boost on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Central to the prosecution&#8217;s case is the suggestion that Ecclestone paid Gribkowsky $44 million so that his preferred buyer for F1&#8217;s commercial rights, CVC, got the green light.<\/p>\n<p>It is alleged that Ecclestone wanted CVC to buy BayernLB&#8217;s shares, because the Munich state bank holding onto them could endanger his role as F1 supremo.<\/p>\n<p>But a former legal advisor to BayernLB on Tuesday testified in Munich, and the witness denied that the bank ever posed a threat to Ecclestone&#8217;s job.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think it ever arose that Ecclestone could be deposed,&#8221; German media reports quote the unnamed witness as saying.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t even think it would have been possible,&#8221; the witness reportedly added.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bernie Ecclestone&#8217;s defence got a boost on Tuesday, as the corruption trial continued in Munich. If found guilty of having bribed the jailed former F1 banker Gerhard Gribkowsky, the sport&#8217;s chief executive will certainly lose his job, and probably also be jailed. But his defence &#8211; that Gribkowsky blackmailed him &#8211; got a boost on &#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":[59,2637,5262,5340,2638],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22427"}],"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=22427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22428,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22427\/revisions\/22428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}