Max Mosley knew there were moves afoot to uncover some salacious aspects about his private life, two months before the
News of the World's damning front page exposé entitled ‘
F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers', it has been claimed.
The disgraced FIA President – who earlier this month controversially won a vote of confidence in the FIA Senate on his future capability to rule the sport – was warned by long-time friend, ally and business associate
Bernie Ecclestone that people had been hired to discredit him with an ‘unlimited budget' to dig up some dirt,
The Times has revealed.
In the wake of the sex scandal coming to light – the ‘Nazi connotations' to which Mosley has always strenuously denied, and over which he is suing News Group Newspapers – the 68-year-old claimed he had been the victim of a ‘covert investigation' into his private life by a ‘group specialising in such things, for reasons and clients as yet unknown'.
Sources close to Mosley have also hinted that Ecclestone had perhaps been involved in a conspiracy to plot against him and bring him down, with the embattled president himself suggesting the sport's ringmaster and commercial rights-holder was trying to wrest political control of F1 away from the
FIA. Now, however, an intelligence consultant close to Ecclestone has revealed that is far from the case.
Ecclestone was informed back in the third week of January – more than two months prior to the
News of the World's front page splash – that Mosley was being targeted. He was notified by Dean Attew, a co-founder of London-based corporate intelligence company Titon International – in partnership with Major-General John Holmes, a former director of the UK Special Forces – and a man who used to work closely with Ecclestone for four years until 2004 and has in the past also advised Mosley.
Attew himself had been contacted by ‘a friend' he claimed was representing people who wanted Mosley removed from office. Attew said he took the approach seriously and immediately related what he had been told to Ecclestone.
