LISBON, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Ex-Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone was stopped at an airport in Portugal on Monday after police found he had brought a shotgun into the country on his private jet without documentation.
The 95-year-old told Reuters in a telephone call from Portugal that he was carrying the gun with him from Switzerland for a clay pigeon shooting event but lacked a necessary “blue book” to import it.
Ecclestone said he had landed with his wife Fabiana, who is a vice-president for sport at Formula One’s governing body, at Tires airfield near the resort town of Cascais outside Lisbon.
“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 explained.
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Ecclestone, who does not speak Portuguese, said he had passed customs but then the police asked about the gun and sought documentation, leading to what he called “unnecessary aggravation”.
His Brazilian-born wife eventually went to Lisbon, accompanied by a customs official, to surrender the gun to the authorities.
“So now we’ve gone through all this and the people in Lisbon have got the gun,” he said. “I’ve signed some documents as they wanted.”
Portuguese newspapers first reported the incident, quoting police sources saying authorities discovered the shotgun during a routine check.
Ecclestone, a former racer who ran the commercial side of the sport for some 40 years until being ousted in 2017, owns a home in the adjoining resort area.
The episode echoed the Briton’s earlier brush with the law over an unregistered weapon in Brazil, where he was briefly detained in 2022 for carrying a small handgun while boarding a private plane to Switzerland.
Ecclestone then acknowledged owning the gun, but said he was unaware it was in his luggage, dismissing the incident as “silly” and “tiny.”