Former Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone pleaded guilty on Thursday (October 12) to tax fraud in a case in which he is being prosecuted for failing to declare more than £400 million (€473 million) of assets held in Singapore , between 2013 and 2016.
Aged 92, Bernie Ecclestone initially pleaded not guilty in August 2022, but he finally admitted the charges against him during a hearing on Thursday in London. He will thus be sentenced at a later date, without going through a trial, which was scheduled to begin on November 16 and last up to six weeks.
He is accused of failing to declare a trust in Singapore with an account with $650 million, or around £400 million at the time. The British prosecution had authorized his indictment following a tax investigation presented as “complex and international”.
Mr. Ecclestone reigned supreme over F1 for nearly forty years, until January 2017. He then left his post as leader of the world’s motorsport elite after being fired by the new owner of the commercial rights to the discipline, the American group Liberty Media.
A short-lived racing driver at the end of the 1950s, then boss of the Brabham team, the British businessman, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes magazine at more than 2.5 billion pounds, is widely considered the architect of the transformation of F1, which became a lucrative activity under his rule. In particular, at the end of the 1970s, he was one of the pioneers in the marketing of television broadcasting rights for sporting events.