Bernie Ecclestone Detained in Portugal Over Shotgun Incident

Bernie Ecclestone’s latest brush with the law did not come at a glamorous paddock or a boardroom, but on the tarmac of a small Portuguese airfield.

The 95-year-old former Formula 1 supremo was stopped and briefly detained on Monday after police discovered he had brought a shotgun into Portugal on his private jet without the required documentation.

Ecclestone told Reuters by telephone from Portugal that the weapon was a clay pigeon shotgun he had taken from Switzerland for a shooting event, but he did not have the necessary “blue book” to legally import it.

He arrived at Tires airfield, near the coastal resort of Cascais outside Lisbon, with his wife Fabiana, who serves as vice-president for sport at Formula 1’s governing body. The couple passed through customs, but the situation changed quickly.

Police then questioned Ecclestone about the gun and asked for paperwork he did not have, triggering what he described as “unnecessary aggravation.”

“All that happened is that 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.

Ecclestone, who does not speak Portuguese, found himself caught in a tangle of regulation and procedure. The weapon became the centre of attention.

His Brazilian-born wife eventually travelled 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 officers discovered the shotgun during a routine check.

For Ecclestone, a former racer who controlled Formula 1’s commercial rights for roughly four decades before being ousted in 2017, the stop in Cascais was an unwelcome echo of a previous episode.

In 2022, he was briefly detained in Brazil after a 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 did not know it was in his bag, dismissing the matter at the time as “silly” and “tiny.”

Now, with a home in the same Cascais resort area where he landed on Monday, Ecclestone again finds his name on police reports rather than grid sheets – this time over another unregistered gun and another avoidable confrontation with airport security.