Italy: Disgraced Formula One boss, 'Billionaire' owner, says he's quitting Italy

Rome, 12 June (AKI) - Disgraced Formula One boss and businessman Flavio Briatore said he will close his swanky Billionaire Club in Sardinia and pledged to stop investing in his native Italy.

"I'm sick of the bureaucracy of this country," he said in an interview Italian celebrity weekly Chi. "I'll invest abroad.

In 1998 Briatore opened his Billionaire Club in Sardinia's Porto Cervo, a summer destination for the word's super rich and famous.

Briatore, 62, has come under fire for cutting corners in Italy where he has been convicted of fraud and run into difficulties with tax authorities. In other difficulties, he was in 2009 forced to resign from the ING Renault Formula One team after being banned for race fixing at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix when he ordered his driver to crash the his car. He's prohibited from working in Formula One until 2013.

"This government has set up a kind of social hate," he said. "If you have a boat and you moor in a port you're considered a bandit or a thief.

The Italian government has declared a war on tax invasion. In a high-profile campaign to stop tax cheats, police have run background checks on owners of luxury cars and yachts to see if their declared income and assets correspond.

Briatore is the owner of a 60-metre yacht. In 2010, under the prior government, he was accused of falsely registering the vessel as a charter boat as a way to avoid paying sales tax when anchoring in a European harbour.