DOME ROBBER’S GAFFE HEIST NO2 ONE of the Millennium Dome robbers has been jailed again — after a bungled heist in which he smashed through the wrong wall.
Raymond Betson, 52, tried to break into a multi-million-pound cash depot with a digger but fled empty-handed when he ended up in a loading bay. The buffoon also left his DNA on a balaclava in a nearby bush. Now he has been jailed for 13 years for armed robbery. Betson previously got 15 years for the failed £200million diamond heist on London’s Dome in 2000, where cops were waiting for him and his gang. He and other masked robbers, wielding baseball
By EMILY CHILDS
bats, targeted the Loomis UK depot in Swanley, Kent, in March 2012. Det Con Helen King said: “What went from an armed robbery quickly turned into a farce.” Representing himself at his trial, Betson, of Folkestone, asked the jury: “I said I was not able to give an alibi. “Can you be sure I might not have been in bed?” There was a less than one in a billion chance DNA on the mask could match anyone else, Maidstone Crown Court heard. The rest of the gang remain on the loose.
Jailed . . Raymond Betson
Kale fad: 3 arrests
COPS nicked three foragers for taking sea kale from a protected nature reserve and flogging it to expensive restaurants. The gourmet plant tastes like a cross between cabbage and asparagus. But Mike de Stroumillo, of London supply company Mash, said the community at Shoreham, West Sussex, was “missing a trick” as it could sell licences to pick the veg which fetches £7.50 a pound.
WE’RE FUHREROUS
A neo-Nazi was made to delete his Heil Hitler ringtone after it angered rail passengers in Hamburg.
AMAZINGEARLY EXCLUSIVE by
SHARON HENDRY
BERNIE ECCLESTONE was only a schoolboy when he realised that making money wasn’t enough – he also needed power.
LIFEOFBILLIONAIRE‘TITCH’ECCLESTONE
HIGH SOCIETY . . . with daughters Petra, left, & Tamara
He was a tiny, undersized kid, born nearly blind in his right eye, and any coins he earned would have been easy pickings for stronger lads.
WED. . . with Fabiana
So Bernie, known as Titch because of his size, assembled a gang to protect his cash. And there was quite a bit of earnings for his miniature “heavies” to protect, even back then. During World War Two, he would wake at 5am, do two paper rounds then rush to the baker, buy up dayold cakes and sell them for a profit at school. When his mother asked if he ever ate a cake himself, he replied: “No, that’s my profit.” The working-class youngster — still not even ten years old — also earned money picking fruit and potatoes and selling fountain pens. Meanwhile, he and his trawlerman dad Sidney and mum Bertha were spending nearly every night in the bomb raid shelter at the bottom of their garden. They lived in Dartford, Kent, in an area known as “bomb alley” because of the number of hits it got from German planes. In fact, when asked to describe his childhood, the Formula 1 supremo, now 83 and worth £2.2billion, summed it up in one word: “Bombs”. This week Ecclestone has been ducking enemy fire again — this time in a German courtroom where until Tuesday he was on trial for bribery.
HIS LOVE TRACK RECORD
I arrived F1 was ‘When very amateurish’
Prosecutors in Munich charged him with bribing jailed banker Gerhard Gribkowsky to smooth the sale eight years ago of a stake in F1 to private equity firm CVC. They claimed Ecclestone — who denied the charges — favoured CVC because it was committed to keeping him on as F1’s chief executive. But he walked free from court after negotiating a £60million payment to settle the case. The deal is the biggest personal financial settlement in Germany’s history. But to those who know him, it came as no surprise. Former BBC F1 commentator Murray Walker, now 90, told The Sun: “He is a wheeler-dealer. That’s what people need to get clear in their minds.” If found guilty, Ecclestone could have faced ten years in jail and the end of his decades-long dominance of motor racing. And that is unimaginable to people like Walker. He said: “F1 without Bernie? No one knows how to answer that because he is F1 and every detail is controlled by him. “He would be replaced by a committee but it’s much better if a sport can be run by a capable dictator.” Ecclestone’s first taste of the motoring world came aged 15 when he left school and plunged into the second-hand car business in South London. By 21 he had his own dealership and was on his way to riches. He has recalled: “I was earning good.” Motor-mad Ecclestone sold cars, raced cars and in 1971 he bought the Brabham racing team. He has said: “When I arrived in the sport it was a very amateurish show. The team owners did not want responsi-
TIGHT GRIP . . . wi
th F1 aces in 2010 inc
luding, far left, Lewi
s Hamilton
HE IS MR CHECKMATE
bility for organising the sport. They just wanted to race their cars and try to win.” In other words, they treated racing as sport. But Ecclestone saw it as big business. He made F1 his fiefdom, helping his friend Max Mosley become head of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, the sport’s governing body. In 1995, it helpfully granted Ecclestone a 100-year lease on F1’s commercial rights for a modest £213million. Blessed with trend-spotting talent, Ecclestone saw that F1 could sell international TV rights and later created races in B a h r a i n , Singapore and anywhere else that paid big
VISION . . . in 1971
money. This year the F1 roadshow heads to Russia for the first time. And with every deal, his wealth has grown — apart from the odd hiccup like his divorce settlement from second wife Slavica in 2009. The split between 5ft 5in Ecclestone and the 6ft 2in ex-model and mother of his two younger daughters, socialites Tamara, 30, and Petra, 25, is estimated to have cost him £594million. Ecclestone and third wife Fabiana Flosi, 37, now divide their time between mansions in Chelsea, West London and Gstaad in Switzerland. As well as being head of one of the UK’s most glamorous families, he has a huge yacht and a private jet on which the frugal billionaire feeds passengers on bags of Hula Hoops. Ecclestone — whose idea of a perfect night is a cold beer in front of a wildlife documentary — prides himself on his thrift. He has declared: “I rarely buy anything without a discount.” He also rarely buys anything that he does not keep in mint condition.
He once said: “Order is a big thing with me. If a picture is crooked, I have to straighten it. It applies to all sorts of things . . . ornaments, artwork. “If I were in someone else’s house, I’d be the same. I have to go over and fix it. I suppose it’s about control. I feel I have to be in control. It’s the same with work. “I’ve tied up a lot of things in the sport by creating order, by controlling the way things are run, by everyone knowing what they should be doing. It’s just the way I am.” Veteran F1 writer Tony Dodgins says Ecclestone’s eye for detail is evident in his immaculate style —
WHILE researching Ecclestone for this article, I discovered there are two types of Bernie acquaintances, writes SHARON HENDRY. There are those who want to say good things about the F1 master and those who don’t want to say bad things. Britain’s most famous self-made billionaire does not just manage the most glamorous sport on Earth, he IS the sport and his tentacles grip it tightly. Whether they love or loathe him, most F1 associates are on Ecclestone’s payroll and would jeopardise their liveli-
hoods by challenging the grand master, who has undoubtedly helped make them richer over the years. What is undisputed by all his associates is that he is one of the shrewdest operators on the world business stage. Close observers describe a man who plays cut-throat chess with the finesse of a Russian grand master. Think you are winning and you will play to Ecclestone’s advantage. It is a foregone conclusion that he will checkmate his opponent in the end – as the German courts can testify.
the Beatles-style haircut coiffed by celebrity stylist Richard Ward, shirts and trousers from Savile Row and shoes from Bally. Dodgins added: “He likes F1 to look the part. In the past drivers of support race trucks have been told to move their vehicle stickers because they are out of alignment with the rest. “In the paddock, race transporters must be parked inch-perfect and, even in the circuit car parks. the vehicles are all strictly directed by parking attendants so that any aerial photos look good.” In 2009 Ecclestone praised Hitler for being “able to get things done” — although he later added that he only meant Hitler until 1938. He
also got into trouble for declaring: “Women should be all dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances.” His friends insist both were just examples of his sense of humour and say his ability to make people smile is his most powerful weapon of all. Longtime pal Michael Blash, 65, an F1 mechanic, has said: “Bernie can be very ruthless but he does it with a smile and that’s where Bernie’s very clever — a typical car salesman. “He can have people over and they walk away very happy that they’ve been screwed.” s.hendry@the-sun.co.uk
‘Bernie is a wheeler dealer and dictator’ - MURRAY WALKER
MOGUL Ecclestone’s love life has been as colourful as his business career. He wed for the first time in 1952, aged 21, to telephone operator Ivy Bamford. They had one daughter, Debbie, now 59, before they divorced in the Sixties. He later had a 17-year relationship with Tuana Tan, from Singapore, and was still with her when he began an affair with Croatian model Slavica Malic in 1982. She was 6ft 2in and 23, and he was 5ft 5in and 51. He first spotted her standing in the pit at the Italian Grand Prix with driver Nelson Piquet. The F1 supremo roared: “Get out of here. No girls in the pits. Out!” Reluctantly, Slavica moved to a nearby wall but that did not satisfy Ecclestone. He ordered her: “Off.” But this time Slavica stood her ground.
Wife and work
She shouted: “If you come any nearer, I’ll kick you.” Ecclestone was captivated and invited her back to his mobile home for a can of Coca-Cola. One of British high society’s most intriguing love affairs had begun. It seemed an unlikely match but they always said they had a lot in common. Both had escaped poverty – she from a communist regime in Rijeka, Croatia, and he from wartime Dartford. They shared the same core values and sense of humour, too. They married in 1985, a year after the birth of their first daughter Tamara, now 30. In 1988 second daughter Petra, now 25, was born. Slavica eventually grew fed up after realising that Ecclestone never wanted to retire and enjoy his billions. Forced to choose between wife and work, he chose work. Their undisclosed 2009 divorce settlement – estimated at more than £594million – was probably the largest in UK history. Bitter Ecclestone vowed: “I will remain single for the rest of my life.” However, in August 2012 he married Brazilian lawyer Fabiana Flosi, now 37.
‘Hitler was a man who got things done’ - BERNIE ECCLESTONE
EX . . . with Tuana Tan