A former German bank executive has been arrested for allegedly accepting a $50 million kickback in the 2006 sale of a large stake in the Formula One's rights holding company, German prosecutors said Wednesday. The former risk manager of regional public-sector bank BayernLB was taken into custody on charges of corruption, tax fraud and breach of trust toward his former employer, prosecutors in Munich said in a statement.
Gerhard Gribkowsky was in charge of managing the sale of the bank's F1 stake to London-based buyout group CVC Capital Investment. But prosecutors say he led the bank to sell it ``without evaluation of its current value' which, in turn, earned him ``two consultancy contracts totalling $50 million.'
The money was paid to firms in Austria that he had set up for that purpose, prosecutors said. German media on Wednesday widely cited unnamed judicial officials as saying the money had been paid by firms based in Mauritius and the Caribbean, but prosecutors declined to comment or to say who had been the source of the payment. A spokesman for CVC in Germany, who declined to be named in line with company policy, declined to comment on Gribkowsky's arrest and the bribery allegations.
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