Bernie Ecclestone Arrested Again Over Shotgun Incident in Portugal

Bernie Ecclestone’s long, controversial afterlife beyond the Formula One paddock has taken another sharp turn.

The 95-year-old former F1 supremo has reportedly been arrested in Portugal after landing his private jet with a shotgun on board, the second time in four years he has been detained over a firearm.

Ecclestone was stopped at Tires Aerodrome in Cascais, just outside Lisbon, according to Portuguese outlet Correio de Manha. Airport officers are said to have detained him during what was described as a “routine operation” after his jet touched down.

Portugal’s Airport Division of the Public Security Police (PSP) has not yet issued an official statement. A PSP spokesman stressed that its border control officers were not responsible for the arrest being reported, pointing instead to the Tax and Customs Authority – Lisbon Delegation as the body dealing with the case. Customs officials have so far been unavailable for comment, and it remains unclear whether Ecclestone will face charges or be brought before a judge.

The incident instantly revives memories of his brush with the law in Brazil in 2022. Then, Ecclestone was detained at Campinas airport near Sao Paulo after security staff discovered a gun in his luggage as he prepared to board a private flight to Switzerland.

He admitted carrying the weapon, a LW Seecamp .32, but insisted he had not realised it was in his bag. Brazilian authorities said a businessman had been arrested for possession of a firearm, though did not name him. Ecclestone later dismissed the affair as a “silly, tiny little incident”, complaining that it had caused major disruption as he tried to return to Europe with his family, and even denied he had been formally arrested.

He has previously said he bought the pistol years earlier from a Formula One mechanic in Brazil, without ammunition, claiming he kept it only as a deterrent.

“They said you need something like this,” he recalled of the advice he was given. “It might work if someone tried to mug you or something. So I bought it from the guy.” He described having it at home and jokingly showing it to visitors.

Now, questions over his relationship with firearms have resurfaced on European soil.

Ecclestone, who helped bring Formula One back to Portugal in 1984, divides his time between homes in Switzerland, Portugal and Brazil. His life away from the grid has been dominated in recent years by legal and financial battles rather than race calendars and TV deals.

In 2022, he agreed to pay £652 million after failing to declare overseas assets. That case centred on a trust in Singapore holding around £400 million which had not been disclosed to UK tax authorities. He pleaded guilty to a single charge of fraud and received a 17-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, avoiding jail but cementing a dramatic fall from the untouchable powerbroker who once ran Formula One with an iron grip.

Now, at 95, Ecclestone again finds himself under scrutiny at an airfield, this time in Cascais rather than Campinas. The details of what happens next sit with Portuguese customs and the courts. The pattern, though, is already uncomfortably familiar.