Former F1 Boss Bernie Ecclestone to pay £600 Million to settle tax fraud case after pleading guilty
Bernie Ecclestone has run into some legal trouble due to a £400 million tax fraud which he has pleaded guilty to.
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British billionaire Bernie Ecclestone is famous in the Formula One world for his revolutionary ideas that changed the sport when he owned it. While F1 was viewed as an elitist event reserved for the European aristocrats ever since it started in the 1850s, Ecclestone made it available for the common people. He was instrumental in making the pinnacle of motorsports a worldwide phenomenon, and he still frequently makes the headlines for his antics. Only a year ago, the now 92-year-old was detained in Brazil for carrying a gun at the airport.
Ecclestone’s name as also been extensively discussed in relation to the Felipe Massa 2008 F1 Championship case. That year, the Brazilian racer would have gotten the World title had it not been for Lewis Hamilton outscoring him narrowly to capture his debut win. The incident had been swept under the rugs up until Bernie Ecclestone recently talked about a massive controversy from the 2008 season that has the potential to completely reverse the Championship results. He claimed that Renault had deliberately had Nelson Piquet Jr. crash his car so that Fernando Alonso won the Singapore GP instead of Felipe Massa.
If the Renault team had not illegally manipulated the Singapore GP results, Massa would have had enough points to win the 2008 World Championship. Bernie’s confession helped Felipe Massa put together a huge lawsuit demanding monetary compensation for his missed World title. And now, Bernie Ecclestone is again in the news for a tax fraud worth £400 million as the business mogul did not reveal his hidden assets in Singapore to the HMRC (the tax authority of the United Kingdom).
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Bernie Ecclestone will reportedly have to reimburse the British tax authority
With a net worth of £2.5 billion, Bernie Ecclestone is one of the richest and most powerful men in all of United Kingdom. And he managed to downplay his riches by suppressing the news of his extra assets which he has gotten in Singapore. According to a recently conducted investigation, the valuation of those assets have come to be around £400 million. In July, 2022, the HMRC “authorised the charging of Bernard Charles Ecclestone with fraud by false representation“, as per Motorsport.com.
Now, Bernie Ecclestone has pleaded guilty to his tax fraud in a changed statement when he appeared at the Southwark Crown Court. And according to the reports, it is suggested that the British billionaire evaded paying the tax for his offshore assets in Singapore for 18 long years. Thus, Bernie will now have to reimburse His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs by paying a settlement fee of over £600m.
Only a few years ago, the ownership of Formula One changed hands as Bernie Ecclestone sold his rights to the Liberty Media. Thus, the franchise does not have any direct link to the Briton anymore and they have refused to make any statment regarding this recent development in Ecclestone’s tax evasion case. But this is not the first time the 92-year-old has been incriminated for these charges. He was involved in a bribery trial in Germany between 2012 and 2014 where he had to pay £60 million in settlement.
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Riddhi Mondal
(1821 Articles Published)