F1 security firm seeks legal advice over bribery claim
The company in charge of security for this year’s Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix is seeking legal advice over an alleged breach of track security.
According to a report by Channel NewsAsia on Thursday (21 September), Security and Risk Solutions (SRS) director Jon Lium said no bribery of a guard took place as alleged.
On Sunday (17 September), Facebook user Viv Smith posted a photo of a man and woman posing inside the Marina Bay Street Circuit, which caused race organisers to investigate.
The post caption said, “3am in the morning. Bribed the security guard to let us onto the track. He not only agreed, he took the photo. Non F1 fans won’t understand this, but most of us will.”
Smith later retracted his claims on Wednesday (20 September), saying that there was “no bribery, no corruption, no nothing”, and that a guard helped them take the photo.
“It puts the security industry in a very bad light and this is not good for us,” said Lium. “We submitted all our findings to the event organisers. They were satisfied and we were satisfied that there was no breach as alleged by the post.”
SRS, who also provided security at last year’s Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix, has concluded that there had been no bribery after interviewing all officers on duty at the time of the alleged incident. Lium also said that there was “no truth” to the claim that a guard had agreed to take a photo of the couple.
“There are four groups of people working during the wee hours: Apart from the security there is the technical team that’s running around to check and make sure everything’s okay, there is a delivery team during the night and there are ground staff. It could be one of them but it’s definitely not one of our security staff,” Lium told Channel NewsAsia.
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