A paragraph in the German criminal code allows for trials to be ended under conditions that are "app

The president and chief executive of Formula One agreed smith and wesson with German prosecutors on Tuesday to pay the record sum to end his trial, a district court in Munich confirmed. The defence has denied accusations that he had bought his freedom.
"This trial has been going on for two days a week and it was going to go on until October. When you're trying to run businesses it's not easy trying to resolve things when you're dealing with lawyers.
The Munich court said in a statement that $99m ( 59m) would be paid to the German treasury and a further $1m to a German children's hospice charity. The money will be paid within a week, it added, after which the trial will officially be abandoned.
"The abandonment is neither a 'deal' nor a 'settlement', even less so a 'buying out,'" said Ecclestone's defence team in a joint statement. Prosecutors said they had based their decision partly on the defendant's age and willingness to cooperate.
Ecclestone was accused of having given Bayern Landesbank's chief risk officer, Gerhard Gribkowsky, $44m in 2006 in order to ease the sale of the bank's share to a company that had guaranteed to keep Ecclestone as chief executive.
Throughout the trial, Ecclestone admitted paying the money but denied it was a bribe, saying he paid it to silence Gribkowsky who had threatened to report him over irregularities in his tax affairs. Gribkowsky was sentenced in 2012 to eight and a half years for tax evasion, breach of duty and accepting bribes.
In a statement explaining its decision to abandon proceedings, the court said it had "considerable doubts" that Ecclestone knew Gribkowsky had held the position at the German state bank at the time of the alleged bribe.
Last week Ecclestone's legal team informed the court that he was willing to pay 25m ( 19.8m) to Bayern LB in a separate smith and wesson settlement. The bank, which had been seeking 400m in damages from Ecclestone, had rejected an earlier offer of 50m in 2012, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.
German law provides for some criminal cases to be settled with smaller punishments, such as fines, though the size of the payment in the Ecclestone case has led some to question a system that in effect favours rich defendants. smith and wesson
A paragraph in the German criminal code allows for trials to be ended under conditions that are "appropriate for resolving the public interest in a prosecution," as long as the gravity of wrongdoing does not outweigh this.
The agreement, which his defence lawyers said kept his presumed innocence intact, smith and wesson means Ecclestone is able to continue unchallenged at the helm of the multibillion-pound smith and wesson business, which he is credited with building up over the past four decades.
During the trial, Ecclestone handed over the day-to-day running of Formula One to his chief legal officer, Sacha Woodward-Hill. Now Ecclestone is once again free to take control, with no sign of the veteran sports magnate voluntarily giving up any of his considerable power.
Bernie Ecclestone: 'I'm an idiot' for paying 60m to settle F1 bribery trial This article was published on the Guardian website at 13.01 EDT on Tuesday 5 August 2014 . A version appeared on p14 of the Main section section of the Guardian on Tuesday 5 August 2014 . It was last modified at 13.10 EDT on Tuesday 5 August 2014 .
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