57 replies to this topic

[T54]

In case anyone wonders (I know, why? ) what happened to the strange ex-Onyx F1 team owner, ex-Belgian jailbird, ex-Belgian extremist deputy (in the green-anarchist party) you may want to have a looksee here ...

Be prepared for some serious verbiage and to be in total shock...

The best of this site is to be found at the very bottom of the "weekly editorial" if you can put up with it for more than 15 seconds...
One has to feel sorry for Bernie to have had to put up with this guy...

T54

[dretceterini]

Unfortunately, this nut case is not much more to the left of Stalin than many of our government officials..

Hey, I have an idea what he can do with his money now; pay for the illegal aliens

[Coogar]

Barking.......And not in Essex either !
What do we know of Martian politics anyway ?

[bigbrickz]

From one of his editorials :

"On February 8, 1990 - three weeks before the start of the F1 season - the Jewish lawyer Serge Klarsfeld informed me that the FIA-president Jean-Marie Ballestre was a former Nazi. He even added a picture of Ballestre's member card, including his number. Since the same information went to the Rothschild Bank, I lost that day a $ 50,000,000 three-year sponsoring contract. Furious that Bernie Ecclestone had hidden that info to everybody, I gave a press conference in the George V Hotel in Paris, where I announced that I retired definitively from F1 racing and that my Onyx team was for sale. When a British journalist asked me if I should quit F1 racing for ever, I said that NEVER more I should come back to F1 racing, and that, if a journalist saw me at a F1 race he could receive immediately $ 1,000,000 from me. Scarce were the journalist believing that this was not drunken talk. However, I never came back"


I'd never heard that one before, but a Google search for "Jean-Marie Balestre SS" reveals, among others, from Mike Lawrence :

"During World War II, Balestre had served in the Legion de Charlemagne, which was a French regiment in the Waffen SS and photographs have been published of he, in uniform, stretching his right arm, as one does when one gets cramp.

He later pleaded that he was a member of the French Resistance acting as a double-agent. If Balestre is right then he was the only French double-agent in the Waffen SS so the fact he has not been hailed as a hero by former members of the Resistance is pretty small-minded of them"


Startling.

[philippe7]

Originally posted by bigbrickz


"During World War II, Balestre had served in the Legion de Charlemagne, which was a French regiment in the Waffen SS and photographs have been published of he, in uniform, stretching his right arm, as one does when one gets cramp.

He later pleaded that he was a member of the French Resistance acting as a double-agent. If Balestre is right then he was the only French double-agent in the Waffen SS so the fact he has not been hailed as a hero by former members of the Resistance is pretty small-minded of them"

Startling.

It was actually called the "Legion des volontaires français contre le bolchevisme" ( fairly understandable in any language I guess....) and was incorporated in the Waffen SS as "Division Charlemagne".

Those lost souls were fighting exclusively on the eastern front , and I do not at all see what interest whatsoever the French resistance would have found in having a double agent on the battlefield in the muddy plains of Russia.....if Balestre had been in the Gestapo , or in the Milice ( the french paramilitary anti-resistance organisation ) , maybe one could add some faith to his claim....but the Division Charlemagne doesn't make any sense...

Anyway....it's easy for us to discuss those matters in the warm confort of our peaceful 21th century western society.....the choices were maybe less obvious in occupied France in 1943.

[bigbrickz]

Thanks for the information Philippe, I've had a quick look on the net for "Division Charlemagne" (and the LVF) and they seem to have had a pretty rough ride on the Eastern front.

Since it was a decision by the Nazi leaders to "brand" all foreign troup contingents as SS rather than Wehrmacht, perhaps the Division Charlemagne weren't as evil as a "typical" SS division, such as the one which committed the Oradour massacre.

Absolutely agree with your point about making blanket judgements from our warm 21st century peace and comfort.

Finally I came across this :

"I remember searching for years to find one scurrilous book, published in the early 1980s and banned within a matter of days, which purported to blow the lid off the financing of Grand Prix racing and the people involved in the sport. It included all the usual stuff of legend but included an extraordinary photograph of the then FIA President dressed in some of Hugo Boss's creations from the 1944 collection. Jean-Marie Balestre, it should be pointed out, has proved on many occasions in courts of law all over Paris that he was only in the SS because he was working as a secret agent for the French Resistance."

[masterhit]

ultimately, you have to say, we don't know Balestre's actual thought processes. We know he was outspoken etc and had an ego, sure he may have dressed as Napoleon, but then seriously, everyone has "thought" about being a great leader etc, it's not his problem that he got into a position of power later in life were others did not.

As others have said, the choices back then were stark and based on survival etc, we all have ourselves and our own loved ones to think of etc when we have to make such harsh choices.

Usually only loved ones get to really see the man behind the public persona. So all we can do is be on the periphery.

Morality aside the irony is that these people are similar in terms of ego, personality etc, just happening to be on different sides of the argument. And in the end, both lost out.

[T54]

Gentlemen,
Get off Balestre, everyone knows about that person of repute/disrepute.
Check out JPVR and what he is doing with what's left of his lost pile of stolen dollars!

[masterhit]

I must admit, I did find it bizarre, reading Mr Van Rossem's statistical claims r.e. his Moneytron system, that if he was able to make three quarters of a billion dollars on the stock exchange with it in one year, why he would need to be televising some slot car championship on t.v....

Seems like a waste of his valuable time, no?

[Rainer Nyberg]

Mr van Rossem was an unlikely character during his brief tenure in GP Racing, and it seems he is a man who goes his own ways.

Somehow he reminds me of former US chess whiz Bobby Fischer.

[bigbrickz]

Originally posted by T54
Gentlemen,
Get off Balestre, everyone knows about that person of repute/disrepute.
Check out JPVR and what he is doing with what's left of his lost pile of stolen dollars!

Yeah, sorry for dragging this off-topic but when I landed on JPVR's accusations I was pretty sure these were the words of a raving lunatic and was quite shocked to find out there was some truth to them.

Anyway, the JPVR site is a real gem! From the graphic design to the bit where he gets pissed off with the slot car designer to the economics papers. Brilliant

Just to get all geekish: why do some of the slot cars shown have 4 wheels and solid looking chassis whilst others have 2 wheels and chassis that look like a large paper clip?

[Rainer Nyberg]

Anyone who can translate flemish?

Did I write this?

[Gert]

Indeed Rainer...

Did I write this?

[masterhit]

There's a link to his alleged accounts with the amounts on the web for those who are prepared to google his name and stuff, (keywords - his name, and "accounts") I won't provide the link, sufffice to say it is not english language, but the numbers make for interesting reading. Talk about an eye opener.

It seems that they have traced 114.991.519 USD, which is more than the 30 million pounds quoted as having to be repaid following his court case.

[Rainer Nyberg]

As there are some clear similarities between Scandinavian languages and Dutch/Flemish, I had a fair shot at it, Gert

[bigbrickz]

The second half of this article by Mike Lawrence discusses Van Rossem.

I tried to find some info on the Moneytron scam (assuming it was a scam) but found nothing. Anybody have any links?

[Peter Morley]

I have heard various reports about Moneytron.

One thing is clear is that JPvanR came back from America having made a lot of money (seemingly on the stock market), he is certainly of well above average intelligence, possibly to the point that he seems strange to most people.

The words most people use about Moneytron include 'pyramid selling' & 'money laundering'.

So your large return was either someone elses money (those closest to the top getting a larger share - as David Hunt did with NSA, but of course that was multi-level marketing, nothing pyramid shaped at all there).

Or if you had a large amount of money that you couldn't account for, you could place that in the scheme (most of it being un-declared by the scheme) and later on receive a cheque for a much larger amount, than your declared contribution, because the scheme had done so well!

Presumably a combination of both and the use of his forecasting abilities/programme is possible, but it seems unlikely that the original intention was fraudulent - that came about as an attempt to keep the business afloat.

As with all stock market based investments what most people fail to realise, is that none of them make money, all they do is move it from one person to another - for every gain that someone makes someone else (or more usually a larger number of people) has to put that money in have lost it.

Oddly enough banks performing similar services are allowed to do so, when an individual does it he is collared by the law.

At least he just relinquished his Ferrari collection, rather than cut them up for the insurance money as some moronic British Lord did!!!
Those were desperate times - many people thought their losses would be covered by the never ending boom and were badly caught out when the boom turned around.

[masterhit]

Oh yes - banks and building societies put your investments into stocks and shares which may lose money. Then of course there's APR percentages which when you do the maths are nothing like what is quoted. Debt these days is sold as credit. If/when you get seriously into debt, they charge you for each reminder letter and for being overdrawn. Then of course there's the number of people who have found that their insurance claims are dismissed or their pension fund proves to be worth nothing, their mortgage has a mysterious "shortfall" of tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds...

And those are the more legitimate methods.

[dretceterini]

Regarding slot cars:

About 25 years ago, slot CAR racing turned into simply slot racing...negotiating electric motored "thingies" that look more like coal shovels than cars around tracks. There is a small, select group that actually enjoys this. These thingies cost around $1000 to build, and one really must have 20 "back up" motors and thousands of dollars of parts to be competitive. Silly, IMO.

T54 is trying to "recreate" the hobby of slot car racing with his True Scale Racing Federation. The cars must be scale models of real cars; not thingies.

Although my personal interest is minimal, as the former head of the Strombecker factory slot car team (1960s) I wish him the best of luck.

[Don Capps]

Originally posted by philippe7
It was actually called the "Legion des volontaires français contre le bolchevisme" ( fairly understandable in any language I guess....) and was incorporated in the Waffen SS as "Division Charlemagne".

Those lost souls were fighting exclusively on the eastern front , and I do not at all see what interest whatsoever the French resistance would have found in having a double agent on the battlefield in the muddy plains of Russia.....if Balestre had been in the Gestapo , or in the Milice ( the french paramilitary anti-resistance organisation ) , maybe one could add some faith to his claim....but the Division Charlemagne doesn't make any sense...

Anyway....it's easy for us to discuss those matters in the warm confort of our peaceful 21th century western society.....the choices were maybe less obvious in occupied France in 1943.

It was eventually the "Legion des volontaires français contre le bolchevisme," but began in 1941 as simply the "Legion des volontaires français" and then became the more accepatable "Legion des volontaires français contre le bolchevisme." A call for 15,000 volunteers went out, and only 13,400 answered the summons. About 4,600 were rejected for medical reasons and another 3,000 for "moral" reasons and of the 5,800 left over, about 3,000 came from its first several months of existence. There was a sizable number of LVF members from the PPF (Parti Populaire Francais). One can easily sense their devotion to "the cause." The LVF wore their Hugo Boss wardrobe when outside France and a variant of the standard French uniform within France.

While Balestre has doubtless proven that his role within the LVF was that of a "double agent," it does give one some significant insight into the man and his worldview.

[Coogar]

quel dingbat.......

[marat]

Balestre arranged well his story after the war.
Here a quote from this week's newsmag "Marianne" editoral (subject the Saddam archives):

"...The Soviet Union, after 1945, used the archives they took, selecting the most interesting
one to blackmail former collaborationists, or to make them work for them (just as the man
who ruled over F1 races for such a long time)..."

[T54]

Balestre and so many other current and past French "leaders" have spent lots of time in their life to mask their anti-semitism and racism in general as "patriotism".

Jean-Pierre van Rossem on the other hand, claims that he is a great defender of the jews, then blames all the ills of the world on the American jews. Go figure.
As a former OPM (Other People's Money) "manager", I.E. "You Give Me, I Spend It For You And Promiss That I will Return It Plus A Zillion Per Cent Interest", he is nothing but a liar and a cheat, so his "morals" on the subject are to say the least, very suspect. His mis-management of the tidy little Onyx F1 team shows how much damage can be caused by a single crazy lunatic.

As far as Balestre, he is just the kind of French elitist that gave France a bad name before and since the bogus revolution of 1789. Power corrupts as much as good red wine.

T54

[mdecarle]

Originally posted by bigbrickz
The second half of this article by Mike Lawrence discusses Van Rossem.

I tried to find some info on the Moneytron scam (assuming it was a scam) but found nothing. Anybody have any links?

Excuse my words, but this Mike Lawrence is an idiot. His 'article' is full of lies and incomplete information.

Name Five Famous Belgians: Justine Henin (Tennis), Adolphe Sax (Inventor of his last name), Paul Delvaux (famous painter), Tintin (or his drawer, Hergé), Neuhaus (inventor of the Praline). Jacques Brel (French-speaking Flemish singer), Maurice Engelen (Praga Khan and Lords of Acid), Peyo (creator of The Smurfs), Eric Geboers, Joel Robert, Stefan Everts (All multiple times motorcross champions - Everts 8 times when he's 13 in today's race), James Ensor (Painter),

There are 10 million Belgians, of which about 100 000 speak German; is that 1 fifth ? The reverse of the "wealth" of Wallonia began in 1964, 40 years ago, not 25. The hole story of Dutroux he writes are rumours. In 1995 and 1996 the police did search his house, but failed to find the children. I live in Belgium, and I never heard of "BelSud", because the south of Belgium uses "Region Wallonie". The Flemish are NOT protestants ! And never have been. The South Netherlands (Now Flanders) has always been Catholic, and thus the "19 Provinces" (as was the name of The Netherlands when they still had a 'Stadhouder') had several flavors of Christianity (Catholic in South, Protestant in North).

Then JPVR: Most of the money he invested was 'black money', illegal of nature. If you loose a couple of millions that you made by selling drugs, do you complain to the police? JPVR published more than 15 books, of which I own 10, not 2 as the article implies.

It seems the only research he actually did was to the first appearance of something resembling "Frites" ??? Fries were first made around 1680 in the "Meuse" region, in La Wallonie, Belgium.

I am very sorry to say this, this article is full of lies and incorrect information. How can we expect him to give us correct information about anything, when he misses information that can be looked up in any encyclopedia?

[Don Capps]

Please, don't hold back your feelings on this matter and let us know how you really feel about Dr. Lawrence.....

Better yet, contact Dr. Lawrence about his article. Seriously, I would suggest that you do make an effort to contact Dr. Lawrence and bring your concerns about the column and the issues that you se with it. You can contact him through Pit Pass, an email address being there somewhere.

[VDP]

As another Belgian don't forget the "cryo" of his past wife in a cemetery ?
The idea has to be abandonned by legal pursuit.


Robert

[Kpy]

Originally posted by mdecarle




Name Five Famous Belgians:

I LOVE quizes !!:

How about

Paul Frere
Olivier Gendebien
Jackie Ickx
Eddy Merckx
Georges Simenon

and for good measure - Georges Remi ( well, you mentioned him)

also

Rene And Georgette Magritte And Their Dog After The War?

Seriously, can't we keep TNF for motor racing ?

[T54]

JPVR WAS in motor racing. For gawdsake, he OWNED a formula one team. What is so irrelevant?

[Kpy]

Originally posted by T54
JPVR WAS in motor racing. For gawdsake, he OWNED a formula one team. What is so irrelevant?

There are 10 million Belgians, of which about 100 000 speak German; is that 1 fifth ? The reverse of the "wealth" of Wallonia began in 1964, 40 years ago, not 25. The hole story of Dutroux he writes are rumours. In 1995 and 1996 the police did search his house, but failed to find the children. I live in Belgium, and I never heard of "BelSud", because the south of Belgium uses "Region Wallonie". The Flemish are NOT protestants ! And never have been. The South Netherlands (Now Flanders) has always been Catholic, and thus the "19 Provinces" (as was the name of The Netherlands when they still had a 'Stadhouder') had several flavors of Christianity (Catholic in South, Protestant in North).

THAT, etc is why............................................

[T54]

THAT, etc is why

I have no idea of what you are talking about. We are speaking of JPVR, his involvement with F1 financed by stolen money and no one else. Whatever comments someone made about Belgians in general is irrelevant to this discussion. Everyone knows that each country has its good guys and its bad guys. Wht are you defending this vile individual?

[Kpy]

Originally posted by T54


I have no idea of what you are talking about. We are speaking of JPVR, his involvement with F1 financed by stolen money and no one else. Whatever comments someone made about Belgians in general is irrelevant to this discussion. Everyone knows that each country has its good guys and its bad guys. Wht are you defending this vile individual?

I am not defending JPVR - may he rot somewhere hot - or the guy who wants to talk about language and religion in Belgium - that's OT. I'm in complete and 100% agreement with you about JPVR, dear T54.

[mdecarle]

Originally posted by Kpy




I am not defending JPVR - may he rot somewhere hot - or the guy who wants to talk about language and religion in Belgium - that's OT. I'm in complete and 100% agreement with you about JPVR, dear T54.

I will add one reply, because as Don Capps and you, Kpy, have said, it is really offtopic.

I, Belgian citizen, am presented with a link to an article about Belgium and the Belgian Grand Prix. It also mentions JPVR. But, as I read the article, I notice it is full of incorrect information, which I chose the most striking to fight. I ended with the notice that it would be difficult to expect correct information from this Mike Lawrence, when simple information that can be found in any encyclopedia is so plainly wrong.

Concerning JPVR: he's admitted that he traded fake bonds and stocks, and that a package of said fake stock (which were worth several millions USD) were stolen from him in transportation and caused him the problems that lead to his bancrupcy. It was 2 days after the theft that he made his famous press conference: "I have good news and bad news. The good news: there is one capitalist less; the bad news: it is me". However, he did buy the Onyx team with his own money.

[T54]

Concerning JPVR: he's admitted that he traded fake bonds and stocks, and that a package of said fake stock (which were worth several millions USD) were stolen from him in transportation and caused him the problems that lead to his bancrupcy. It was 2 days after the theft that he made his famous press conference: "I have good news and bad news. The good news: there is one capitalist less; the bad news: it is me". However, he did buy the Onyx team with his own money.

[Kpy]

mdecarle

At the risk of incurring Don Capp's wrath for prolonging this piece of offtoppery, which is something I would like to avoid, may I just suggest that you contact Mike Lawrence (who is a journalist whom I respect vey much). If you would like to PM me, I have his e-mail address.
Going back to JVPR's claim that he went bust because someone stole FAKE bonds from him - well REALLY !!

Oh, and I personally find any form of apology for Dutroux offensive in the extreme.

Now let's get back to motor racing.

[T54]

Oh, and I personally find any form of apology for Dutroux offensive in the extreme.

I second this... and I am not the kind of person to be easily offended because I become to the Old School where we did hold our ground and did not cry at the first sight of a bumblebee.
The involvement of JPVR in both forms of motor racing (F1 and GT, then slot car racing) is bizarre at best. I will give him this: he genuinely loves slot car racing and certainly contributed in a large part to the late 1980's pro-racing boom through his extravagance, even if it was not with his own money.

T54

[Wolf]

Since nobody asked for my opinion, I'll have to volunteer it.

I will support mdecarle in his post and, what has been put in question here, whether his post is appropriate in here. Firstly, even though this is discussion of JPVR it is not he who posted a link to Mike Lawrence's article, he merely reacted to it. Since that was supposedly article about motorsport, what is wrong with mdecarle's challenging some (or most) of the facts presented therein? Personally, I found said article to be in bad taste at least, and venomous and/or derogatory towards Belgians in all fairness. Maybe it is matter of 'lashing out' or 'venting' (cancellation of Belgian GP, IIRC) by good doctor Lawrence, but I believe it was rather diagreeable thing to write.

Furthermore, I didn't think mdecarle was defending that Dotroux fellow, rather that he was challenging Mike Lawrence's rather dismissive stance towards Belgian police's effort in that particular case.

I'm in no position to be a judge here, nor would I want to be one, but I believe if mdecarle's examples are right that Dr. Lawrence may have succumbed to (not too uncommon) journalist trait of writing with authority on matter they might or might not be familiar with, let alone be authority on. : Why is it so wrong or inappropriate to challenge here things presented as facts in article allegedly concerning motorsport which has been presented as 'source' in here?

[Kpy]

Dear Wolf

Calling a journalist, or any other human being, an "idiot" is not really polite.
Dr Lawrence wrote an article in favour of a Grand Prix at Spa.

As for the the attitude of the Belgian police concerning one of the most serious crimes I can think of - that's hardly a motor racing question.

[Wolf]

Originally posted by Kpy
As for the the attitude of the Belgian police concerning one of the most serious crimes I can think of - that's hardly a motor racing question.

Apparently, Dr. Lawrence disagrees- he brought it up as relevant fact in discussion of Spa cancellation (as symptomatic of Belgian politics &c).

If I wrote things about Belgium and Belgians (or any other place and its inhabittants) Dr. Lawrence did in that artice, and was called an "idiot" in return, I'd say I got away with it pretty well...;) But maybe mdecarle's reply should be viewed as coming from someone from nation whose existance would be missed by noone (according to Dr. Lawrence) and who comes from country whose politics "are riddled with a level of corruption that would be a scandal in many a Third World country" (same source).

Maybe he thought he was defending Belgian GP, but maybe, just maybe, some Belgians think that 'with friends like that, who needs enemies?'.

[Muzza]

I completely subscribe to what you wrote, Wolf.

Mike Lawrence's article is not only an unsuccessful tentative to be funny; it is misinformed, misinforming and offensive. The only joke is the article itself.

I am not making a claim for political correctness - quite the opposite: a well-written piece making fun of typical "belgianisms" could have been good, but Lawrence's work is not one thing nor another.

Kpy, maybe Mike Lawrence is not an idiot, but his article is idiotic.

On another subject, my opinion about the partial and journalistically faulty coverage given by Atlas F1 to the events involving the Belgian police and the photographers stationed at La Source in the recent Formula 1 grand prix at Spa is posted here.

I am disappointed that, nine days after I posted this message, no one at the Atlas staff has yet cared to reply to my message (I am an Atlas F1 subscriber) - even if it were to completely dismiss me. Talk about customer care.

[T54]

Belgium has its qualities and its problems. JPVR is one of its problems, and the Belgian government and judicial system are very weak indeed, and have been for a long time.
Bless the great Belgians, Olivier Gendebien, Willy Mairesse and so many other greats.
JPVR can go to hell as far as I am concerned, he would be at home there after the hell he meanly created for some.

[Rainer Nyberg]

Mr Van Rossem's account of the recent Le Mans here.

No great fan of ACO it seems!

[T54]

Actually, if Van Rossem was running the ACO, the only cars allowed to race would have sealed motors, weight penalty depending on the driver's political opinion or nationality and the Belgian team would be more equal than the others and somehow would have a faster motor and gripier tires.
That's how he runs his slot car races.

[dretceterini]

The man is a nut case, but he is right to some degree that in this years Le Mans, the rules favored the French teams.

[Twin Window]

Originally posted by dretceterini

...in this years Le Mans, the rules favored the French teams.

Nothing new there, then.

[T54]

What he does effectively is blaming the low-bucks team of Henri Pescarolo for profiting of new rules designed to lower the bar for private teams. Henri is a kind and gentle man and has nothing to do with this rule change. So as usual, JPVR opens his mouth and as usual sounds loke a big fat cretin. Oh I forgot, he IS a big fat cretin.
If only he had been a honest one, no one would have ever heard of that creep.

[theofiel]

about Jean Pierre Van Rossem:

he is an intelligent man. he has several masters (grades?) and he also won some prices at the begining of his carreer for his economic writings. he knows a lot about economy in general, etc ...

Moneytron is the system that made him rich. he traded stocks and became well known quite fast. a lot of people invested in his system, even some of the best known politicians of that time. there are strong rumors that even the belgian royal family gave him money to invest, togheter with a lot of flemish politicians. don't worry about the poeple who lost their money, most of them where fraudeurs themselves who gained their money by "black" business; drugs, schemes etc ...
his whole system eventuelly crashed he claims because he changed his methods for selecting stocks. well, as a result of that he went in prison, sold his F1 team etc ...
just before he went into prison he got himself elected, in the parlaiment he outed the words "vive la république" when the new king of belgian was at the parlaiment for his crowning ...

[Muzza]

Jean-Pierre Van Rossem is leaving the slot car racing scene due to health reasons (he suffers from diabetes).

His website http://www.imca-slotracing.com will be closed down on 31 March.

[T54]

JPVR has threatened to pull his support to slot car racing (like it needs him to flourish) every year since 1989. Nothing new here. Actually I am taking bets on another site about it, because he threatened the same last year and the year before (shutting down his website) and I am getting rich at it.
I have 25 bucks on this one. Would you like to be part of the action?

[Fiorentina 1]

Originally posted by Muzza
Jean-Pierre Van Rossem is leaving the slot car racing scene due to health reasons (he suffers from diabetes).

His website http://www.imca-slotracing.com will be closed down on 31 March.

This is his site? The sportcar history section on it is great. I never understood what that had to do with slot car racing, but I'm not complaining, it's the reason I have it book marked.

[Spaceframe]

Originally posted by bigbrickz
From one of his editorials :

"On February 8, 1990 - three weeks before the start of the F1 season - the Jewish lawyer Serge Klarsfeld informed me that the FIA-president Jean-Marie Ballestre was a former Nazi. He even added a picture of Ballestre's member card, including his number. Since the same information went to the Rothschild Bank, I lost that day a $ 50,000,000 three-year sponsoring contract. Furious that Bernie Ecclestone had hidden that info to everybody, I gave a press conference in the George V Hotel in Paris, where I announced that I retired definitively from F1 racing and that my Onyx team was for sale. When a British journalist asked me if I should quit F1 racing for ever, I said that NEVER more I should come back to F1 racing, and that, if a journalist saw me at a F1 race he could receive immediately $ 1,000,000 from me. Scarce were the journalist believing that this was not drunken talk. However, I never came back"

JPVR can't have been a close follower of F1 racing - the story of Balestre's time in the SS was well known in motor racing circles already in the early 1980s, as was his explanation for his presence there.

Claiming that Bernie E. had "hidden that info to everybody" is simply not true - I read all this in Grand Prix International in 1984 in a major interview with Balestre, which also went over the row about Jacky Ickx' decision to stop the 1984 Monaco GP (Balestre implied that Ickx as a factory Porsche driver had stopped the race to protect the Porsche-engined McLaren of Alain Prost from being overtaken, but that's another story).

JPVR's original business plan was a computer programme analysing the upwards and downwards movements on the stock exchange and based on that the programme also put out prognosis for future developments. Of course it didn't last, no hausse in history has lasted foever, but the Onyx team was fairly impressed, when they asked him for sponsorship, and he offered to take their funds to the stock exchange and came back with a healthy profite soon after. He never laid down any money of his own to get his company's name on the cars.

F1 seemed to attract a few of those types in those days - another one was heavily involved at Brabham for a while, before he was jailed for fraud (promising investors an incredible return on their money - a proposition that turned out to be nothing but another pyramid scheme).