The price you pay

What is the price of justice? According to the courts in Germany, the answer to that question is about £60m ($100m).

That was the amount Bernie Ecclestone paid to bring an end to bribery charges against him. Shock and horror ensued across the Twittersphere and later on news sites. The fact that the mastermind of modern Formula One (F1) could buy himself out of criminal charges was incomprehensible. Suffice to say, it did not go down well, not least here in the UK.

Just as Rolf Harris's sentence was frowned upon for being too short (a sentence which he is now appealing) and news of Oscar Pistorius' bedside gun collection is received with an arched eyebrow outside of his South African gated residence, it is important to put these 'surprise' outcomes into context, whether that is in terms of time or jurisdiction. Just because the UK doesn't recognise a similar system doesn't give us carte blanche to criticise.

The context in Ecclestone's case is that the German criminal code makes provision for trials to be concluded under conditions that are 'appropriate for resolving the public interest in a prosecution'. This is still subject to a proportionality test, of sorts. It is also important to understand that approximately 300,000 criminal cases are resolved by terms of a financial settlement each year.

What does this mean? Well, it means that the costs and time of prosecution are saved - if here only in part - and the funds from settlement are returned to the region. It also means that wealthy defendants are able to 'buy' themselves out of criminal trials.

It is also interesting that some of the funds (a not inconsiderable $1m) will go to a children's hospice. Although this only accounts for 1 per cent of the total, this is another concept with which we are unfamiliar. As for the remaining $99m, that will go directly to the German treasury. Ecclestone's optimistic recommendation that it should be used to build a motor-racing track in the area is, I suspect, unlikely to be acceptable.

In accepting the settlement offer, prosecutors said they had in mind not only the defendant's cooperation during the trial, but also his age. This reminded me of the Harris sentence, when the newly inaugurated Attorney General, Jeremy Wright, rejected a review of his sentence, making a statement that "the overall sentence had to be just and proportionate to the overall offending" and that the judge was also required to "take into account the age of the offender".

The settlement means that neither side can claim victory. There is no guilty verdict. Ecclestone has not been acquitted. The whole saga just goes away and he can once again commit to his chief executive F1 role. He acknowledged that "when you're trying to run businesses it's not easy trying to resolve things when you're dealing with lawyers".

The fact that the diminutive octogenarian billionaire is now suggesting that he regrets making the settlement, referring to himself as "a bit of an idiot" is presumably just spin - the Ecclestone (and interchangeable F1) PR machine in overdrive. It's a valuable brand and needs protecting. But regardless of this conclusion, will it prove to be a case of too little too late?

kevin poulter, Editor at large @SJ_Weekly

#SJPOULTER

editorial@solicitorsjournal.co.uk

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