Bernie Ecclestone Detained in Portugal Over Undocumented Shotgun

Bernie Ecclestone’s latest brush with the law did not come at a racetrack or a boardroom, but on the tarmac of a quiet airfield outside Lisbon.

The 95-year-old former Formula One supremo was stopped by Portuguese authorities on Monday after landing at Tires airfield, near the resort town of Cascais, when police discovered he had brought a shotgun into the country on his private jet without the required documentation.

Ecclestone, speaking by telephone from Portugal, said he had flown in from Switzerland with the gun for a clay pigeon shooting event and was caught out by paperwork.

“I took a gun that I've been using in Switzerland for clay pigeon shooting into the country to do some clay pigeon shooting in Portugal at a place where they had this weekend an exhibition thing going on,” he said, explaining that he did not have the necessary “blue book” to import the weapon.

He had already passed through customs when the situation changed. Police then questioned him about the gun and asked for documentation, triggering what Ecclestone described as “unnecessary aggravation”.

The former F1 boss, who does not speak Portuguese, had travelled with his wife Fabiana, a vice-president for sport at Formula One’s governing body. With the dispute over the weapon unresolved, it fell to her to resolve the standoff.

His Brazilian-born wife went on to Lisbon, accompanied by a customs official, to hand the shotgun over to the authorities.

“So now we've gone through all this and the people in Lisbon have got the gun,” Ecclestone said. “I've signed some documents as they wanted.”

Portuguese newspapers first revealed the incident, citing police sources who said the shotgun was found during a routine check.

Ecclestone, a former racer who went on to control Formula One’s commercial rights for around four decades until he was ousted in 2017, owns a home in the nearby resort area. The airfield and the coastline around Cascais are familiar territory to him.

The scene in Portugal carried a clear echo of an earlier episode. In 2022, Ecclestone was briefly detained in Brazil after an unregistered small handgun was found in his luggage as he prepared to board a private plane to Switzerland. He acknowledged owning that weapon but said he had not realised it was in his bag, dismissing the matter at the time as “silly” and “tiny”.

Now, another airport, another undeclared gun, and another set of documents signed — a recurring subplot in the long and controversial afterlife of Formula One’s former powerbroker.