Bernie Ecclestone, the man who once ruled Formula One with an iron grip and a stopwatch for a heart, spent part of his Monday being questioned by Portuguese authorities over an undocumented shotgun.
The 95-year-old was detained at Tires Aerodrome in Cascais after customs officials inspected his private jet and found the firearm in his possession. Multiple authorities have confirmed the incident. Standard protocol followed: the gun was seized, and Ecclestone was formally made a defendant in criminal proceedings. What happens next in the case remains unclear.
The setting was a familiar one for Ecclestone – a private plane, international travel, a sense of urgency. The script, less so. After landing, he and his party passed through customs, where, he said, staff recognised him and asked the routine question: anything to declare? His answer: nothing beyond the usual personal items.
He walked out. Then came the twist.
One of his entourage told him the police wanted a word. Ecclestone went to see them and was told they wanted information about the gun he had brought in. He said he hadn’t even unzipped the case before explaining it was a shotgun, carried for a specific reason: a clay pigeon shooting competition in Portugal.
The plan, as he told it, had come together at short notice. His wife, Fabiana, had met someone on a flight from Brazil to Portugal who mentioned he was entering a clay pigeon event. She called Ecclestone, suggested he should come and take part, and he agreed. With shotguns already legally imported into Switzerland for their regular shooting there, he decided to travel with one of his guns.
That was where the bureaucracy bit back.
Officers asked for the “blue book” – the documentation that should accompany such a weapon, effectively its passport. Ecclestone said he had never heard of it. He told them he had bought the gun in England and taken it into Switzerland through the normal channels, but the question kept coming: where was the blue book?
Around four officers, he said, told him that what he had done amounted to trying to import a gun into Portugal. Ecclestone insisted he had not attempted any such thing, pointing out that he had gone through customs and was now speaking openly with police.
The dispute moved back to customs. There, according to Ecclestone, officials laid out his options: surrender the gun in Lisbon, allow them to assess it, and then decide whether he wanted to import it formally, paying any applicable duty and applying for a temporary import. He agreed.
Reports that he had been arrested quickly surfaced. Ecclestone, speaking to PA Media, rejected that description, saying the police “were very helpful and doing all they could to stop us from having to do what we had to do”.
For Ecclestone, this is not uncharted territory. In May 2022, Brazilian authorities arrested him at Viracopos Airport in Campinas after an X-ray scan of his luggage revealed an undeclared LW Seecamp .32-calibre pistol as he prepared to board a private plane to Switzerland. He admitted owning the gun but said he did not know it was in his bag. He posted bail and was allowed to continue his journey.
Portugal has become a significant backdrop in his later life. His wife, Fabiana Flosi, has been linked to the purchase of a property about 15 miles west of Lisbon, reportedly the most expensive private house sale in the country at around £35m. The former F1 supremo, who helped turn the sport into a global commercial powerhouse, has not exactly faded into quiet anonymity.
Ecclestone’s story in Formula One stretches back to the 1950s, first as a driver and businessman, then as a team owner, and eventually as the sport’s all-powerful dealmaker. He orchestrated television rights, sponsorships and circuit agreements, building the financial and political framework that underpins modern F1. His official reign ended in 2017 when Liberty Media took over the commercial rights, but his shadow still hangs over the paddock.
Now, late in life, the man who spent decades navigating political minefields and legal battles around the world finds himself once more at the centre of a very different kind of scrutiny – over a shotgun, a missing blue book, and a clay pigeon shoot that was supposed to be a casual diversion rather than his latest date with the authorities.
