Former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone pleads guilty in £400,000,000 fraud case 

Former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone has pleaded guilty to a fraud case of £400m against him for failing to declare a trust in Singapore to the government.

The former head honcho of the motorsport organization was due to face trial at Southwark Crown Court in November over the allegations of fraud against which he had previously denied. As per Sky Sports, Bernie Ecclestone pleaded guilty to a single count of fraud on 7 July 2015.

The court has previously heard he failed to declare a trust in Singapore with a bank account containing around $650m US, worth about £400m at the time.

In his plea, Ecclestone accepted that he was 'wrong' while answering the questions and claimed he did because it 'ran the risk HMRC would not continue to investigate' and he 'now accepts that some tax is due'.

Bernie Ecclestone speaks on F1's current obsession with the US market

The former F1 head mentioned that the sport's current obsession with adding more races in the US was completely 'mad'. He stated that he wasn't aware of F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali's stance on the topic but he wasn't a fan of how the sport organized the recent edition of the Miami GP.

Speaking with Daily Mail, Bernie Ecclestone said:

“I don’t know what Stefano’s position is. I think he is a little bit more aware of what the people in America think. I think you can see that with the races in America that they are doing — which I think is completely mad. The one in Miami — the way they ran that was mad, trying to be American rather than the way I did it, which was trying to be pure Formula One as it was, rather than as it could be."

“Maybe they are completely right; maybe I was wrong trying to keep it more Formula One. I watch every practice session and every race and I look and I think, ‘My God are we trying to show Formula One or are we trying to show other things?’"

He added:

"Netflix has captured them a little bit and they follow that a bit too much. Netflix is in the entertainment business as long as it suits them. It’s not like our old broadcasters who have been with us forever.”

It will be fascinating to see if the current owners of F1 or Stefano Domenicali respond to Bernie Ecclestone's comments on the sport's shift in focus toward the US market.