Bernie Ecclestone will avoid any further investigation into whether or not he paid a bribe to German banker Gerhard Gribkowsky in 2005 after agreeing an out-of-court settlement.
The 83-year-old billionaire will pay £60 million ($100m) to the state of Bavaria in what is believed to be Germany’s largest ever settlement.
News that the charges have been dropped was confirmed on Tuesday, ending a two-year trial which wasn’t expected to reach a final conclusion until late-September.
“It seems that we will be successful in the settlement,” Ecclestone’s laywer Sven Thomas told the Indepedent. “The amount is not confidential. They are talking about $100m.
“It is a settlement without any conviction, the presumption of innocence is still valid. That was a condition under which I negotiated.”
Thomas then joked about what the Bavarian state should do with the money: “The $100m is for the state of Bavaria. Maybe they will try and build a circuit. I will propose this – that they should build a nice circuit.”
Had Ecclestone – who has claimed innocence throughout – been found guilty, he could have faced up to ten years in a German jail.
