Motor racing personalities that became criminals...

[herowassenna]

Okay, a new thread from one we were discussing yesterday.
I asked a question about a Belgian who used to sponsor the Onyx team and the name Van Rossem came up.
A man arrested for serious tax fraud and imprisoned. I used to race professional slot cars in the late 80's, early 90's, kind of Scalextrix but laser cut chassis and state of art electric motors. Hugely grippy tyres and speeds up to 90mph, in real time. Anywayyyyyy,
Van Rossem used to sponsor events around the world, National championships and the World Championships. Because of his money, he used to choose the venue and he would put in all the sponsorship. For a truly minority sport, those years were unbelievable, and winning the big race, the prize...

A Ferrari 328!!!

A truly mad character, but fascinating to talk to, and when he spoke of wealth, I suppose you could understand that the truly rich never know what they're worth, he said he stopped counting at $220,000,000. By all accounts his wealth originally came from stock market speculation, but who knows the full truth???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Van_Rossem

Vic Lee, i also mentioned yesterday, caught trafficking drugs in oxygen welding bottles after numerous races in Europe.

[courageous]

I think you've put the cart before the horse on this question if you get what I mean.

[Nortad]

wasnt there a german bloke who owned a F1 race team that was wanted for a string of murders and died shoot by the police back in the eighties?

[SeanBlue]

What kind of slogan is "'Party on, I'll pull you through!' from that Van Rossem guy? lol

And to answer your question, I found some real interesting reading via F1 and Crime. I had no idea motorsports was so bloodstained. Everything from cocaine smuggling rings, money laundering via F1 sponsorship, offences under the Official Secrets Act, fraud, French police raids, and gun battles with German police.

My favorite:
"He had taken his arrest calmly and asked if he might collect something important from the desk in his study. He rummaged around until he found the hand grenade he was looking for and then gave the assembled policemen a choice: they could all blow up together there and then, or he could take the police chief hostage and handcuff everyone else to the available furniture. The policemen had a vote and were manacled to the fixtures and fittings while Walz and the police chief went off in a car into the country. On the way he telephoned an accomplice and they met in the hills, leaving the police chief handcuffed to the steering wheel of his car, and throwing the hand grenade into a nearby chicken coop."
Damn that's brazen.

[JeremySmith]

Thread closed....

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