The ex-president of motorsport's world governing body says former Renault Formula One team boss Flavio Briatore will not escape sanction for his role in a race-fixing scandal despite a Paris court overturning his lifetime ban.
Ex-FIA president Max Mosley has told the Times newspaper the idea that in the end, when all the dust has settled, Briatore will get off is fiction.
Mosley was leading the International Automobile Federation (FIA) last year when Brazilian driver Nelson Piquet went to the governing body to tell them he had been ordered by his Renault team to crash deliberately at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to help team mate Fernando Alonso win.
Renault collected a suspended permanent ban while Italian Briatore was barred for life.
Earlier this week a Paris court ruled Briatore's ban was illegal, and also suggested Mosley had violated "the principal of a separation of the bodies that are responsible for the investigation and for the judgement."
Mosley, who has since handed over to Frenchman Jean Todt, says the court decision would undermine the FIA if allowed to go unchallenged.
He says if the Federation can't sanction somebody for doing what Briatore and (former Renault engineering head Pat) Symonds did, then the whole purpose and basis of the FIA would be in question, because it goes to the heart of safety, of fairness and to all the fundamental points of our activity.
