Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/358967
Sport 19 maltatoday, Wednesday, 6 august 2014 SPORTTODAY F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone offers €75 million settlement to end bribery trial Formula one boss Bernie Ec- clestone has offered to make a €75 million payment to end his trial on bribery charges, a district court in munich said. State prosecutors told the court they would agree to accept his offer. Ecclestone, 83, went on trial in munich in april over allegations he bribed a former German banker as part of the sale of a major stake in the motor sport business eight years ago. under German law defendants can in certain circumstances "buy" termination of a trial. The legal proviso exists in order to ease the burden on the courts and to deal with cases where reaching a judg- ment could prove difficult. The F1 boss is accused of having paid the former Bayern lB chief risk officer Gerhard Gribkowsky €33 million in 2006 in order to ease the sale of the bank's share to a company that had guaranteed to keep Ecclestone as chief executive. He has admitted paying the mon- ey but denied it was a bribe. The ruling means the F1 boss walks free from the district court in munich and can continue run- ning the sport. It also means Ec- clestone is found neither guilty nor innocent. His personal wealth is put at €3.13 billion by Forbes, which ranks him as the 12th richest person in the uK. The state prosecutor told the court that Ecclestone's advanced age and other circumstances sup- ported the acceptance of a settle- ment. a paragraph in the German criminal code allows for trials to be ended under conditions which are "appropriate for resolving the public interest in a prosecution," as long as the gravity of wrongdoing does not outweigh this. In practice, wealthy defendants have in the past used this clause to buy their way out of trials. But no one has ever paid so high a sum as has been agreed with Ecclestone. Speaking on German radio on Tuesday, Germany's former jus- tice minister Sabine leutheusser- Schnarrenberger called the deal "cheeky." If it were to go through, she said, "it would not be consistent with the spirit and purpose of our legal system". The amount of the sum on the ta- ble proved that Ecclestone's wrong- doing was weighty enough, she added, that such a deal was inap- propriate in this case and called for lawmakers to tighten the loophole. over the course of the trial, which began in april, witness testimonies had shed increasing doubt on the accuracy of Gribkowsky's bribery accusations. one witness claimed Gribkowsky had got carried away with the idea of succeeding Eccle- stone at the helm of Formula one, describing the banker as a "choleric disciplinarian". rEporTS in England and Spain have claimed arsenal's Thomas Vermaelen is getting closer to join- ing Barcelona. marca cites stories from Eng- land that say la Blaugrana will pay €12.5m to sign the Belgium inter- national, with manchester united also lurking. But arsenal would prefer to sell to Barca rather than strengthen a do- mestic rival and the good relation- ship between the Catalans and the Gunners, established during the transfer of alexis Sanchez, could be a factor. arsenal manager arsene Wenger has acknowledged that Vermaelen is likely to leave the club this sum- mer, 12 months before his contract expires. Barca have signed Jeremy math- ieu from Valencia but luis Enrique is said to want another centre-back, with Vermaelen now at the top of the list. Vermaelen close to agree transfer to Barcelona Bernie Ecclestone