A lot of his finances were disclosed when he was in court in Germany for bribery, and he set up a family trust with his billions. Its an interesting read.
"Since his divorce from his wife, the accused has received payments on the basis of the British decree nisi. The payments amount to around $100 million a year. The duration of the payments from the divorce decree is not known."
When he and Slavica - who is 28 years his junior and at 6ft 2in, almost a foot taller - divorced, it had widely been assumed that she was in receipt of the biggest divorce settlement in history.
Reports suggested that she had been given more than a billion dollars in a deal agreed behind closed doors. The truth, as with much of Mr Ecclestone's affairs, is more complex. According to the indictment, the details of the divorce settlement were given to the German prosecutors in testimony from Frederique Flournoy, a director of the Ecclestones' Bambino trust.
The family trust is based in the tax haven of Liechtenstein and its beneficiaries are Mr Ecclestone's ex-wife and their two daughters Tamara and Petra. It was set up in 1997 and is thought to be worth more than £2.4 billion.
Mr Ecclestone's assets were transferred into his wife's name in the 1990s at a time when he faced heart problems. Slavica had not lived in the UK long enough to be domiciled for tax purposes and, had he died, she would have had to pay 40 per cent inheritance tax on money received from him. Normally, spouses are exempt from this.
To prevent his income from being taxed, Mr Ecclestone transferred his most valuable assets, the entire share capital of F1's parent company, to a Jersey-based business called Petara which was ultimately owned by his ex-wife. She then put the shares in the offshore Bambino trust, meaning no tax has been paid on the money raised by his 2006 sale of F1 to a private equity firm.
The catch is that, as a UK resident, Mr Ecclestone is not allowed control over the trust, otherwise he risks an inquiry and hefty tax bill. The set-up led to the unusual divorce settlement in which the trust paid out to Mr Ecclestone. What Mr Ecclestone has been doing with his £60 million a year trust payments is not clear.
While generous to his children, Mr Ecclestone, the Depression-era son of a Suffolk trawlerman, is known to count every penny. He is said to own a number of private jets, a chalet in Gstaad and a 190ft yacht. But those were assets acquired before his divorce. He lives in an apartment, described as modest in some quarters, above his office overlooking Hyde Park in central London and still works five days a week.