Former Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone has hit back at claims he was arrested for carrying a shotgun at an airport.

The 95-year-old was travelling to Portugal from Switzerland on Monday with his wife, Fabiana, landing at Tires Aerodrome in Cascais, about 30 kilometres from Lisbon.

There, he was pulled aside by police for travelling with a shotgun.

The sport mogul told Reuters he was carrying the gun for a clay pigeon shooting event but did not have the necessary documentation.

“All that happened is that I took a gun that I’ve been using in Switzerland for clay pigeon shooting into the country to do some clay pigeon shooting in Portugal at a place where they had this weekend an exhibition thing going on,” he said.

Ecclestone said after he had passed customs, police asked for the gun’s documentation, which he said caused an “unnecessary aggravation”.

His wife, who is vice-president for sport at Formula One’s governing body, then travelled with officials to Lisbon to surrender the weapon.

“So now we’ve gone through all this and the people in Lisbon have got the gun,” he said.

“I’ve signed some documents as they wanted.”

After describing the incident as “nonsense”, he rejected claims that he had been arrested, ESPN reported.

“No. The police were very helpful and doing all they could to stop us from having to do what we had to do,” he said.

Ecclestone was F1’s chief for 40 years before he was deposed in 2017.

This is not the first time Ecclestone has had a run-in with airports for carrying a weapon.

In May, 2022, he was arrested in Brazil for illegally carrying a gun boarding a private plane to Switzerland.

The Guardian reported that Ecclestone said he owned the firearm which was located during an x-ray scan but was not aware he was carrying it at the time.

The billionaire was fined 6,000 Brazilian reals ($A1625) and the gun was confiscated, according to the BBC.