Motorsport’s governing body wants to change its rules to limit the ways its leadership can be held to account for bad governance.
A set of revisions to the statutes governing the audit and ethics committees has been circulated to member clubs to be approved at a vote of the FIA general assembly on 13 December.
These would ensure that any ethics complaints were overseen by the FIA president and president of its senate, rather than the senate itself.
And they would remove the power of the audit committee to investigate financial issues independently.
The proposals come after a year in which the ethics and audit committees investigated a number of allegations about the conduct of FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem.
These included questions about the finances of Ben Sulayem’s private office; the establishment of a $1.5m “president’s fund” to pay member clubs, which vote for the FIA president. Neither of these were progressed. And two separate allegations that Ben Sulayem interfered in the operations of grands prix in 2023, which were dismissed.
The former chief executive officer Natalie Robyn left the organisation after raising questions about the general governance of the organisation and its professional practices, including finances in the president’s office.
And the head of the audit committee Bertrand Badre and audit committee member Tom Purves were fired in the summer, external in the wake of these investigations.
The compliance officer Paolo Basarri, who looked into the allegations and reported them to the ethics committee, was fired last month.
The changes to the statutes, which have been seen by BBC Sport, remove the ability of the compliance officer to report to the audit committee and remove the audit committee’s ability to investigate any matter unless asked by the president of the senate.
And they would mean the FIA president controlled the appointment of the head of the ethics committee, and remove the role of the senate and compliance officer in its operations.
The president of the FIA Senate, Carmelo Sanz De Barros, is a member of Ben Sulayem’s four-person leadership team.
In essence, critics say the changes would neutralise the ability of whistleblowers to expose questionable behaviour to the ethics and audit committees, and the ability of those committees to pursue actions against any wrongdoing.
The senate, which no longer has to be sent any ethics report, is a 12-person body that includes Prince Faisal Al Hussein of Jordan, the Mexican billionaire businessman Carlos Slim Domit, and Akio Toyoda, the chairman of the Toyota car company.
The FIA has declined to comment.
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