by Max Mosley
I later learned that, in my absence, there had been some action at the 2008 race. Bernie called Alan Donnelly to a meeting in his office where Fred Goodwin, then CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was waiting. The bank sponsored one of the teams and Goodwin was a well-known figure in the paddock, sometimes appearing wearing bizarre multi-coloured trousers. As a sponsor, his message was unequivocal – Alan had to tell me to resign. Alan quietly explained that I would do no such thing. When RBS went bust a few months later, becoming the biggest corporate failure in UK commercial history, there was a suggestion that Goodwin (unsurprisingly now out of a job) would make an ideal replacement for me as president of the FIA. Many FIA officials had seen Goodwin in the Formula One paddock with his curious trousers but would probably not have thought his record in commerce was a good qualification for the FIA. Goodwin himself was a bit more realistic than his supporters and called me to say it was all rubbish.
At almost exactly the same time, and in complete contrast to Bahrain, HRH Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan, unprompted and unexpectedly, issued an official invitation to attend Jordan’s round of the World Rally Championship – a courageous and principled decision in the circumstances and one I greatly appreciated. I particularly enjoyed the way his invitation was an implied reproof to those in motor sport who were trying to take advantage of the News of the World story. It was fascinating to see how different people behaved in these (for me) difficult circumstances. It told you a great deal about the character of each.
Back in Monaco, I met Michel Boeri, who was then president of the FIA Senate, and Marco Piccinini, who had until recently been the deputy president (Sport). They felt I should take a ‘so what’ attitude to the revelations. This was very much my own feeling. People tend to be much more grown-up about sex on the Continent and understand that even the most normal people probably would not want their bedroom activities on the front page of a newspaper.
There’s still the odd person in England who thinks that anything but the most mundane sex is somehow intrinsically wrong, but happily they seem to be a dying breed. Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, is the personification of that outdated attitude, saying in a speech to the Society of Editors that what I did was ‘unimaginable depravity’. You do wonder what he would consider ordinary, or even imaginable, depravity and on what basis he sets himself up as a sort of Kensington Taliban, trying to tell other adults what they should or should not do in their bedrooms. The bestselling book Fifty Shades of Grey shows what an utterly preposterous figure Dacre has become, declaring himself unable to imagine something vast numbers of his readers were soon to be happily consuming. Even to the Daily Mail and Mail Online staff, Dacre’s lack of imagination must seem very strange.
Apart from agreeing with my ‘so what’ attitude to the revelations, Marco and Michel suggested the FIA should hold its own inquiry to investigate whether there was any substance to the Nazi allegation. I was very much in favour because I knew this could be done quickly, before the High Court case, and would begin the work of exposing the News of the World’s lies. Anthony Scrivener QC was retained to conduct it. As a former chairman of the English Bar Council, judge in the FIA Court of Appeal and one of the UK’s most prominent lawyers, he was the perfect person. His inquiry confirmed the Nazi allegation was entirely false.
Some of those in motor sport who disliked me for whatever reason inevitably seized on the newspaper story as an opportunity to try to oust me from the presidency. Most people in the FIA, like Marco and Michel, were supportive and sympathetic but Bernie, to my surprise, popped up on the other side. Having sold a majority stake in his company, he now had a board of directors and was apparently under intense pressure from some unpleasant individuals appointed by the new owners.
It seems they had decided I ought to resign because of the ‘Nazi’ slur. Whether the story was true or not didn’t seem to trouble them, and none of them bothered to meet me or pick up the phone and ask what the truth was. It was out of character for Bernie to go along with them, however great the pressure. I was astonished and could not imagine acting like that had the boot been on the other foot. He could easily have told them he had checked with me, that I had made it clear that the Nazi part was completely untrue and I was taking the newspaper to the High Court to prove it. That, surely, would have been the end of the matter, or at least enabled him to ignore the troublemakers.
But there was more to come from Bernie despite nearly 40 years of friendship. He and Flavio Briatore (who inexplicably had decided to become involved) called a meeting of the Formula One teams in Barcelona at the Spanish Grand Prix, three weeks after the Bahrain race and four weeks after the first story hit the streets. They urged all the teams to sign a letter calling on me to resign. Apparently, Adam Parr (then in charge of the Williams team) enraged Bernie by saying he would only consider signing if he first saw everyone else’s signature on it. After Bernie and Flavio failed to get their letter signed, CVC’s little group went round the paddock at the next race, the Monaco Grand Prix, trying to persuade individual teams to say publicly that I should resign.
They roused support from the BMW and Mercedes teams, neither of which, again, had bothered to ask for my side of the story despite having had friendly relations with me for many years. I found this extraordinary because one of the first things you learn running any sort of organisation is to listen to both sides before doing anything. However, both teams rushed out press statements referring to the Nazi story and calling for my resignation.
The temptation to throw the stone back was irresistible because their glasshouse was so large. I put out a release reminding everyone of the involvement of both companies, and those behind them, in some of the worst aspects of the Nazi regime in Germany at a time when I was still in the nursery. They were extremely offended. The team principals concerned had apparently failed to reflect on their respective company histories. To be fair, I think the press releases were probably the work of rather stupid media advisers who, at best, understood only Formula One. Certainly, no one in either main company would have started that discussion. Some of my allies thought I had gone too far but I thought it served both teams right. They had no need to intervene.
When the CVC deputation arrived at the Ferrari motor home during the Monaco Grand Prix, they suffered a reverse. They asked Jean Todt to sign a declaration saying I should go. It seems they thought this would be straightforward because he’s Jewish. But he would have none of it – he is a friend and had taken the trouble to find out the facts. He told them what they were doing was wrong and why, then sent them on their way.
Instead of scuttling round the paddock trying to undermine me, CVC’s directors should have been supporting my efforts to cut costs. The real threat to their business was not some fabricated story about my private life but the unsustainable costs for the teams.
What was dispiriting about that CVC offensive was the lack of understanding of motor sport it displayed. These people were supposed to be involved at the highest level, yet anyone who knew the basics could have told them they were wasting their time. A vote of all the Formula One teams would have been no more than an irritation, like the intervention by Bahrain. What mattered was what the FIA member organisations thought. After all, it was they who had elected me. The Formula One teams have no votes in FIA elections and what they thought did not really matter.
For this reason, in the week following the first News of the World story, I decided to seek an extraordinary General Assembly of the FIA. When I told Bernie, he advised me strongly against doing this, encouraging me to resign rather than risk a humiliating defeat in a General Assembly. I couldn’t agree. The FIA member clubs had elected me, so it was up to them to decide what I should do. If I lost the vote so be it, but it would be wrong and cowardly to walk away without giving all the countries that had repeatedly supported me for nearly 17 years an opportunity to express their view.
The General Assembly was held on 3 June 2008 and the countries voted in
my favour by 103 to 55, with seven abstentions. Most of those against me (at least the ones who spoke) were opposed to me in any event because of the internal disagreements you get in any large body, particularly an international one. With the News of the World trial just over a month away, it was an important victory. It demolished the newspaper’s claim that I was an unsuitable person to lead the FIA and that their story was therefore, at least to some degree, in the public interest. The international community had spoken and the News of the World was seen for what it was – a disreputable scandal rag of limited importance inside the UK and no importance whatsoever outside.
When the vote was announced, my enemies were mortified. A few days later, Bernie tried yet again to get the teams to speak out against me, this time at the Canadian Grand Prix. Once again, Williams and Ferrari refused to join in and Dietrich Mateschitz, the owner of Red Bull, went out of his way to support me. Bernie tried hard to get Ferrari’s backing for his campaign, even visiting Luca di Montezemolo in New York on his way to Montreal. Luca refused and was reportedly greatly annoyed when, in his absence, the contrary impression was somehow given during the team meeting that followed.
Having called the meeting, Bernie phoned Alan Donnelly as my representative and said he should attend so he could inform me about the teams’ view (I don’t think Bernie had anticipated the difficulty about Luca). Alan rang me and I suggested he should just ignore them. In fact, Alan diplomatically told Bernie he was on his way back to the hotel and couldn’t make it. In the event, Bernie failed once again to get the vote he wanted.
What was so strange about this Canadian campaign was that Bernie ought to have known that, now the FIA General Assembly had voted and Scrivener had found in my favour, it was pointless trying yet again to get the teams to come out against me. Even if he had not appreciated at the time of the Barcelona meeting that the FIA would simply ignore them, as would I, it must surely have been obvious now. At most, a vote of the Formula One teams would have been a minor point to help the News of the World in the forthcoming trial.
This set the scene for the confrontation with Bernie at the World Council meeting on 25 June 2008, described in chapter 28, when he questioned the FIA’s refusal to sign the Concorde Agreement without seeing the financial schedule. However, at the World Council meeting a few months later, on 7 October 2008, Bernie expressed regret that he had joined with those who were trying to oust me. Once he had said that in public, I believed that as far as he, the FIA and I were concerned, it was the end of the matter. Bernie always maintained that pressure from his board of directors was the reason for his actions. I found that difficult to believe but no other explanation has ever been offered.
Unfortunately, the following January the Daily Express, another UK tabloid, announced that Bernie had launched what it called a ‘scathing attack’ on the FIA and quoted him as saying my private life had influenced my decision-making. I found that disappointing. It was untrue, as he well knew, and saying it served no purpose. I knew the journalist would not have written the story without a recording of what had been said. But finally, in an interview in March 2009, Bernie was quoted as saying: ‘I have only one regret in my entire life – I’m sorry about how I treated Max. A friend is someone who helps you when you are in the s***. Max would do that for me and that’s why I’m upset about it.’ When I read it, as far as I was concerned that really was the end of the matter.
In a way, I should have liked to resign as soon as the News of the World story first appeared, because I could then have given Rupert Murdoch and his acolytes at News International my immediate and undivided attention. But I was determined to continue to November 2009 and finish my mandate, as I had planned back in 2005. I was not going to be pushed out of office by the gutter press.
There is no doubt that the support of the FIA General Assembly greatly weakened the News of the World. The FIA meeting was always going to be crunch time, at least as far as international opinion was concerned. I never for one moment doubted that holding it was the right thing to do – and it would still have been the right thing to do even if I had lost the vote.
34
MOSLEY v NEWS GROUP NEWSPAPERS
On 7 July 2008 I arrived at the High Court for the first day of the trial. I was slightly taken aback by the scale of press interest. A huge bank of photographers mobbed my legal team and me as we approached. I had expected interest, but not at this level, and we had to take elaborate precautions to get the young women involved in and out of the High Court without them being photographed.
The News of the World’s barrister, Mark Warby QC (now a judge), put forward a case that seemed largely irrelevant nonsense. At the time I couldn’t understand why, but of course we now know the newspaper was in the thick of the Gordon Taylor cover-up, as explained earlier. No doubt their in-house lawyer, Tom Crone, who was in charge, was preoccupied. We have only recently found out just how desperate Crone must have been to keep the Taylor settlement secret. All this was going on at exactly the same time as they were briefing counsel and preparing their defence to my claim.
Warby was particularly unimpressive in cross-examination. He began by asking me to confirm that I had been at the Chelsea flat that afternoon. This allowed me to point out immediately that it was indeed a flat and not a ‘torture chamber’, as his clients had alleged. Competent cross-examiners try to open with a difficult question to get the witness on the back foot. Warby did the opposite, and hardly got off his own back foot for the rest of our encounter.
He questioned me at length about my political views in my late teens and early twenties. Someone had plainly done some research but fortunately I had never said or done anything, even 50 years ago, that embarrassed me or was of any use to his case. Perhaps Warby’s clients were hoping to show I had had right-wing views in my youth and would consequently be inclined to have some sort of Nazi fantasy in my sex life. If someone with left-wing parents was into S&M, presumably the News of the World would tell their lawyer to say he was re-enacting Stalin’s gulags. It is difficult to think of a more stupid approach, particularly with nothing concrete to back it up. I felt a bit sorry for Warby, who was no doubt under instructions to put this hogwash forward.
He asked long rambling questions and several times I invited him to frame a clear one so that I could try to answer it. His questions were often irrelevant but James Price, my QC, never interrupted because he could see Warby was getting nowhere. For example, at one point he went on at length about the ‘uniforms’ the girls were wearing, which happened to include camouflage dresses reaching to mid-thigh and little else. When Warby persisted in asking which period of German history their clothing brought to mind, I said: ‘I have never seen any German wearing mid-thigh camouflage – it is just nonsense. Did you have a particular period in mind for the mid-thigh camouflage uniforms?’ Warby, at a loss for anything to say, could only manage, ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ My response to this rather un-QC-like performance was: ‘Well, you know, you made the point Mr Warby, not me.’
He had a very weak case but he struggled on with his client’s attempts to claim that Marks and Spencer blazers, a modern Luftwaffe jacket and camouflage dresses reaching barely to mid-thigh with nothing underneath were somehow Nazi. I constantly had to resist the temptation to say something unkind. I had to keep reminding myself I mustn’t irritate the judge, who was the only person I needed to think about. Convincing him had to take precedence over making fun of Warby’s case, however tempting it might be.
The News of the World also badly underestimated the women. Warby got off to an unfortunate start with the first one, Woman D. She suddenly burst into tears when he was about to begin his cross-examination. She is a sensitive person and was perhaps a little overwhelmed by the atmosphere and pressure of a big case in the High Court. Instead of offering sympathy, he suggested she was putting on an act. She plainly wasn’t, and soon recovered herself. It’s never a good idea to risk appearing a bully in such a situation, and I don’t think Warby really
meant to, but that’s how it looked. His cross-examination got nowhere and it was the same story with the other three participants giving evidence.
The longer he went on, the more it became obvious that there had been nothing remotely Nazi in what took place. The only other line open to the newspaper was to try to suggest I had somehow exploited or abused the girls. This fell to pieces when, one by one, they made clear how much they enjoyed the activities in question. One of them has a PhD in hard (not social!) science from a top UK university; another had a very responsible job. It was possibly not what Warby’s clients were expecting and a bit beyond their narrow minds. Although Warby had an impossible case to argue, he did manage to satisfy his employer’s wish to provide material for the Daily Mail and the rest of the gutter press.
The editor, Colin Myler, and chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, both gave evidence. There was steadily increasing embarrassment when Myler was shown photo after photo taken from the video (which he claimed to have reviewed before allowing publication) and each time asked to point to a ‘Nazi’ element. He couldn’t, of course, because there wasn’t one. James Price was relentless and very effective. I almost felt sorry for Myler.
He was also in real difficulty when asked why he didn’t have the German dialogue translated, and why the story claimed the girls were wearing Nazi uniform when one of the newspaper’s own internal emails said there were no Nazi uniforms and that two of the girls were wearing ordinary Marks and Spencer blazers. Even the German girl’s jacket was only an imitation of a modern German air force uniform.