A strange thing happened on the way to the Canadian Grand Prix this week. According to reports, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen has filed a complaint with the police in Canada alleging that he is being extorted by a woman who posted allegations of sexual misconduct on her blog back in 2016.
The woman alleged that Kimi and an unidentified friend were intoxicated and groped her (details of the incident are explained in Autosport article here) after that year’s Canadian Grand Prix when she was working at a bar. From what I have seen online, this year she posted an update and said she was “done protecting” Kimi and said she was “coming for” him. The blog post said that his team was notified and that she was “taking you down”. It then ended with #Burnthepatriarchy #MeToo
I found this while digging around online and you can do the same. I won’t post its content or discuss the woman in detail because the content I saw was a blog backup as the original seems to be password protected now. I did find Legal Logik’s, her legal team, responses to Autosport’s queries of the situation interesting. Here is a pulled quote from the Autosport article:
The firm’s founder Jamie Benizri said they had “a very short discussion that seemed to be going in the right direction” before the complaint was filed “abruptly”.
Asked about the financial settlement raised by Raikkonen’s side, Benizri said: “The idea of settling this, either with an opportunity to hear his version, sitting down in person or via video conference, meeting his camp, even money on the table – these are all things that we would have discussed.”
He stressed that “this is not gangsterism, where you have to feel threatened that there’s going to be this disproportionate negotiating table”.
Benizri said: “It was not a question of cashing out and running to the bank. It was a question of trying to understand what happened in 2016.”
He said the response of lodging a complaint to police was like “trying to kill an ant with a bazooka”.
If the copy of her blog post I read is the real, that’s not exactly the impression she gives of her intent but as I said, I was reading what appeared to be a blog backup. Raikkonen’s legal team told Autosport that she informed them of the initial accusations and then a letter was sent to them on May 23 stating she was going to go public and that there was an initial request for a large amount of money (according the Metropolitan article, it was a seven-figure number).
If Benizri is correct and they were simply trying to find out what happened in 2016, I’m not sure why there was a dollar figure attached to this inquiry and communication at all…then, I’m no attorney.
For Raikkonen’s part, he denies the allegations and felt the only way to protect his reputation was to file the extortion complaint.
Hat Tip: Autosport and Metropolitan.fi and National Post
Sounds like someone overplayed her #m$t$$ hand.