{"id":12779,"date":"2011-11-10T09:55:13","date_gmt":"2011-11-10T09:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=12779"},"modified":"2011-11-10T09:56:57","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T09:56:57","slug":"whats-the-price-of-offshore-secrecy-26-million-when-youre-bernie-ecclestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/11\/10\/whats-the-price-of-offshore-secrecy-26-million-when-youre-bernie-ecclestone\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s the price of offshore secrecy? \u00c2\u00a326 million when you&#8217;re Bernie Ecclestone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, Bernie Ecclestone did, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/sport\/2011\/nov\/09\/bernie-ecclestone-germany-trial-witness?INTCMP=SRCH\" target=\"_blank\">according to the Guardian<\/a>, pay \u00a326 million to a German banker, Gerhard\u00a0Gribkowsky because:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>he feared the German might be about to tell the Inland Revenue that he [Ecclestone] was secretly in charge of Bambino, an offshore family trust controlled by his ex-wife, Slavika \u2014 a false allegation, said Ecclestone, which could nonetheless lead to a tax investigation and a colossal bill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How much was at stake? Ecclestone said<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"I don't control the trust, but if the Revenue had investigated, the burden of proof would have been on me to prove I wasn't\"<\/p>\n<p>How much could this risk cost, asked the judge, Peter Noll. \"In excess of \u00a32bn,\" replied Ecclestone<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh dear; the price of offshore secrets. \u00a326 million just to have someone say you didn't control a trust.<\/p>\n<p>I'm not doubting Ecclestone: I have no reason to do so. But what is very, very clear is that when in this murky world where nothing is clear the suggestion that corruption has occurred is all too easy to make.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, I hope the Revenue are now asking the appropriate questions, \u00a32 billion could help out nicely right now. And I guess my opener would be:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you didn't control the trust why did you need to pay \u00a326 million to someone to make sure they agreed?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, Bernie Ecclestone did, according to the Guardian, pay \u00a326 million to a German banker, Gerhard\u00a0Gribkowsky because: he feared the German might be about to<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/11\/10\/whats-the-price-of-offshore-secrecy-26-million-when-youre-bernie-ecclestone\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,80,32,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-secrecy-jurisdictions","category-tax-havens","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}