Bernie Ecclestone has taken the unprecedented step of issuing an denial that he or anyone associated with him was involved in the exposure of Max Mosley’s predilection for sado-masochistic sex with prostitutes.

In an interview with The Times, Ecclestone, the billionaire Formula One commercial rights holder, said he had no interest in “destroying” the embattled FIA president. The men have been close friends and business associates for more than 40 years, but their friendship is under severe strain after Mosley’s refusal to resign as result of the scandal.

“It is nothing in the world to do with me in any shape or form,” Ecclestone said at his London office. “Secondly, this sort of thing is not my style - not the sort of way I would operate. Thirdly, there is no way in the world that I would want to destroy Max. To suggest I would want to do that is such a lot of b****cks, quite frankly - it’s not true.”

Ecclestone said that the revelations about Mosley that appeared in the News of the World in late March, which included details of a five-hour bondage session with five prostitutes on video, may have been the work of “someone or somebody or ten bodies”. But Ecclestone denied any involvement and said that he had no idea who was behind it. “It’s nothing to do with me at all,” he said. “You must be joking.”

Ecclestone’s comments come after speculation in some sections of the media at the French Grand Prix in Magny-Cours at the weekend that he may have authorised an operation to discredit Mosley. The aim would have been to remove Mosley in advance of the battle now raging between the Mosley-led FIA and Ecclestone’s company for control of Formula One’s multimillion-pound revenues.

Rumours of this kind have swirled around the Formula One paddock from the start of the scandal and were fuelled when Mosley wrote to FIA club presidents two days after the revelations in the News of World, claiming that he was the victim of a “covert investigation” of his private life by a “group specialising in such things, for reasons and clients as yet unknown”. In recent weeks, sources close to Mosley have made no effort to discourage speculation that Ecclestone may have been involved in some way, although they have stopped short of naming him.

In any event, the Mosley camp believes that it has Ecclestone cornered as the “cold war” between the men continues. The FIA president’s supporters believe that Ecclestone is at a loss without his erstwhile friend to advise him and point out that, in the past, whenever Ecclestone had a problem, the first person he would turn to would be Mosley. Even Ecclestone admits that he and Mosley have not had a proper conversation since the scandal broke, but he laughed yesterday when it was put to him that he was missing Mosley’s “world-class political brain”.

“I’d hardly say what Max has been doing lately is world class or political,” he said. “In any case, most of the time it’s the other way round. He calls me for advice.”

The next round in the battle is a meeting of the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council in Paris tomorrow, when Mosley is planning to recommend that the FIA should not negotiate with Ecclestone until he agrees to a radical rethink on the way the sport’s revenues are shared. This would involve a huge loss for Ecclestone and much more money going to the teams. However, Ecclestone is adamant that Mosley and the FIA have no business interfering in the commercial side of the sport and he believes that the European Commission would intervene if the FIA tried to force his hand or meddle.

“I’m sure if that happened, the European Commission would move in,” he said. “Under the agreement with the European Commission, the FIA are the regulators of the sport - like the police - and Formula One Management [Ecclestone’s company] are the commercial rights holders. The money doesn’t belong to Max, it doesn’t belong to him to touch."