Espionage Case: FIA’s investigation, McLaren summoned 

Written by David on July 12th, 2007 at 6:36 pmLast Update: December 09th, 2007 at 12:32 pm

McLaren have been summoned to appear before an extraordinary meeting of the FIA World Motor Sport Council later this month to answer charges relating to Formula One’s ongoing spy controversy surrounding their chief designer Mike Coughlan.

Following an investigation into the matter by the sport’s governing body, the FIA wants McLaren to answer charges that they have breached Article 151C of the International Sporting Code (“Any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motor sport generally”). The hearing will take place on July 26.


Max Mosley, FIA President

The Statement - “The team representatives have been called to answer a charge that between March and July 2007, in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes had unauthorised possession of documents and confidential information belonging to Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, including information that could be used to design, engineer, build, check, test, develop and/or run a 2007 Ferrari Formula One car.”

Possible sanctions – The article 153 of the International Sporting Code, defines the possible sanctions:

Penalties may be inflicted as follows in order of increasing severity :
− reprimand (blame);
− fines;
− time penalty;
− exclusion;
− suspension;
− disqualification.
Time penalty means a penalty expressed in minutes and/or seconds.
Any one of the above penalties can only be inflicted after an enquiry has been held and, in case of one of the last three, the concerned party must be summoned to give them the opportunity of presenting their defence.
For the FIA Formula One World Championship and the FIA World Rally Championship, a penalty consisting of the withdrawal of points over the whole of the Championship may be imposed.

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