Formula One chief executive Bernie Ecclestone is to pay £60 million to end his bribery trial in Germany.

The Munich court where Ecclestone went on trial in April said that $99m (£58.7m) would go to the German treasury and $1m (£600,000) to a children’s hospice.

When the money’s paid in a week’s time the trial will be abandoned, the court said.

Ecclestone was facing charges of bribing former banker Gerhard Gribkowsky to push bank BayernLB to sell its 47.2 per cent stake in F1 to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners — the current majority shareholders.

Prosecutors said that Ecclestone paid Gribkowsky, then BayernLB chief risk officer, a £26m bribe.

Ecclestone has always maintained his innocence, admitting he paid the money but that it wasn’t a bribe — claiming that he was “shaken down” by Gribkowsky.

He alleges that the banker was threatening to tell HM Revenue & Customs that Ecclestone controlled an offshore family trust known as Bambino Holdings.

Although Ecclestone has continually insisted the trust is not in his name, if an investigation had uncovered to the contrary he would have been liable for a tax bill of around £2 billion.

Gribkowsky was jailed two years ago for eight-and-a-half years after he was convicted of tax evasion, bribery and breach of fiduciary duty.

Had Ecclestone been convicted in his trial he would likely have been jailed for up to 10 years and have lost control of F1.

Explaining why the court had accepted the settlement, presiding judge Peter Noll said: “The charges could not, in important areas, be substantiated.”

And Ecclestone’s lawyers stressed that the payment was not an admission of guilt.

“Through this abandonment the presumption of innocence in favour of Mr Ecclestone remains intact,” they wrote.

Part of the German criminal code allows for trials to end under conditions which are “appropriate for resolving the public interest in a prosecution.”

But former justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told German radio that if the deal went through “it would not be consistent with the spirit and purpose” of the country’s legal system.