Millionaire pays €202,000 fine for luxury of speeding

ST GALLEN – A millionaire motorist clocked up a record fine of 299,000 Swiss francs (€202,000) after Swiss police caught him …

ST GALLEN – A millionaire motorist clocked up a record fine of 299,000 Swiss francs (€202,000) after Swiss police caught him racing through a village at 100 km/hour in his red Ferrari Testarossa.

A court in the northeastern Swiss canton of St Gallen gave the millionaire the hefty penalty, which outstripped the previous record of 111,000 francs for a Porsche driver in 2008 in Zurich.

"The accused ignored elementary traffic rules with a powerful vehicle out of a pure desire for speed," the court said in its judgment of the motorist, who clocked speeds of up to 137 km/hour on country roads, said daily Blick.

The St Gallen Cantonal Court ordered the man to dip into his 23.3 million franc fortune, which included a villa with five luxury cars. In October, St Gallen police pulled over another motorist after he committed 15 traffic offences in 10 minutes.