Bernie Ecclestone is expected to put the corruption scandal behind him on Tuesday and return full-time to formula one.<\/p>\n
The sport’s chief executive has been caught up in a German court trial in the opening half of most weeks recently as he fends off accusations he bribed Gerhard Gribkowsky.<\/p>\n
A conviction would have ended his F1 reign and could also have seen him jailed, but he appears to have agreed a $100 million settlement with the Munich authorities that will see all charges forever dropped.<\/p>\n
Germany’s Die Welt newspaper calls it a “second-class acquittal”, but it should be enough to satisfy F1 owner CVC’s Donald Mackenzie, and F1 stakeholders like Daimler who operate under strict corporate compliance rules.<\/p>\n
It is expected that the court will accept the settlement when proceedings resume on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“I do not know how it will end,” Ecclestone told Bild newspaper.\u00a0 “I will be there in court (on Tuesday) anyway.”<\/p>\n
The 83-year-old’s lawyer Sven Thomas is more confident.<\/p>\n
“It seems that we will be successful in the settlement,” he told F1 business journalist Christian Sylt and the Independent newspaper.<\/p>\n
Thomas said it will be a settlement “without any conviction, the presumption of innocence is still valid.\u00a0 That was a condition under which I negotiated.”<\/p>\n
He added that the “settlement puts an end to the trial for all times.\u00a0 No one can try with this case once again.\u00a0 It is binding, like a sentence which can’t be appealed.”<\/p>\n
He also suggested the $100 million could be used by the state of Bavaria to build a formula one track.<\/p>\n
“I will propose this — that they should build a nice circuit,” he added.<\/p>\n
The possibility of financially settling a criminal case is unique within German law, and obviously controversial even within the country.<\/p>\n
Former federal justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger described the idea of Ecclestone buying his acquittal as “impudent”, leaving “a bad aftertaste”.<\/p>\n
Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, having broken the news of the settlement, said it is a “perverse” outcome that “truth and justice are items that can be traded”.<\/p>\n
Ecclestone, however, argues that it was the prosecutor’s idea, not his.<\/p>\n
He told Sylt that the prosecutors said “‘Do we want to have a chat about it?’\u00a0 That is what started it,” Ecclestone claims.\u00a0 “We didn’t ask them, they asked us.”<\/p>\n
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