The Munich state prosecutor's office filed an indictment on Wednesday against Formula One motor racing boss Bernie Ecclestone, 82, on suspicion of bribery  and abetting breach of trust.

Ecclestone is accused of having paid a bribe of $44 million (about €34 million) to Gerhard Gribkowsky, a former management board member of German regional bank BayernLB, during the bank's sale of a 48 percent stake in a Formula One holding company to CVC Capital Partners, a London-based private equity investor, eight years ago. Ecclestone was keen to have CVC as a new shareholder.

Gribkowsky was sentenced to eight and a half years in jail last year for accepting the money and failing to pay taxes on it. The judge in that case said in his verdict that the BayernLB manager had been "led into crime" by Ecclestone.

Since then, the state prosecutor's office has also been investigating Ecclestone, who has denied the allegations. Ecclestone told the Associated Press on Wednesday: "They are alleging I bribed someone." He added that he had done "nothing illegal."

Ecclestone said his payments to Gribkowsky weren't bribes. He told a Munich court in 2011 that he paid Gribowsky to "keep him quiet" after the banker put him under pressure over his tax affairs.

The End of an Era?

The case could delay plans to float the Formula One business on the Singapore stock exchange at the end of the year. It could also mark the end of Ecclestone's more than three-decade reign of Formula One.