Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Harte
The problem that F1 has with Mallya, as with Mr E before, is that although they may be accused of economic crimes, no court has yet found them guilty of anything. The only thing economical that the courts in the UK could find about BCE was his truthfulness, whilst his payment into the court in Germany ensured that they didn't find anything at all.
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does the FIA require a criminal conviction to ban someone from the sport though?
at the least i think its fair to say that ,right or wrong, BE's level of importance to the sport places him in a different category to VM.
slightly different comparison in that Flav and Symonds misdeeds were directly related to a motorsports race but the FIA didnt require a criminal conviction to hand down their bans.
if the Indian courts rule against VM in his absence and seek to place liens and appropriate his property, which is looking increasingly likely, what happens if and when they try to take hold of his F1 assets? is the sport supposed to wait for that to happen first?
surely everything is shielded and protected through a myriad of shell corporations but the perception will taint F1 regardless and that is exactly the type of thing which people have become fed up with.
in all likelihood FOM, CVC, FIA will do nothing proactively and will wait for the PR fallout before they do anything, if they even want to do anything at all.
for me though it would be nice if they did do something proactively for a change and really it costs them nothing to look to exclude VM and may even help them to build up some goodwill among the fans they are currently bleeding away.