The long running saga over the ownership of the Monaco Sports Group (MSG) - the licence holder and operator of the Citroen Formula E team - is still not fully resolved. But that hasn't stopped it appointing former IndyCar team boss Beth Paretta as its new managing director.

The Race can reveal that MSG, the original licence holder of the formerly Maserati-branded team that's now running as Citroen, has appointed Paretta after an attempt by a specially established 'Special Purpose Vehicle' (SPV) company of Liberty Global to acquire the team was not completed.

The move is contentious in the Formula E paddock given Paretta's previous role.

Her appointment is known to have been only confirmed internally at the Citroen team several hours after her arrival at Tempelhof last Friday lunchtime. 

Paretta's previous job was vice-president of sporting at Formula E Operations, the promoter and co-organiser of the championship, which itself is owned by Liberty Global - which is a 65% majority shareholder.

She joined in that role in 2024 and is believed to have left her sporting job responsibilities in December 2025, although The Race understands that she was an employee at FEO until last Thursday. According to FEO, she was not working on sporting projects and hadn't done since the end of 2025 when she began her handover.

This brought some confusion last weekend in Berlin, as she had attended the Madrid E-Prix in March in Formula E Operations kit. That has been explained to The Race as being part of a handover period to her successor, Cara Pelchen, who will work closely with James Rossiter, ironically the former team principal at MSG, who holds a position at FEO as a sporting advisor on the upcoming Gen4 project.

Formula E teams' group FETAMA is understood to have been informed of Paretta's move to MSG on 22 April at the Paul Ricard Gen4 launch.

MSG: The confused background

The backstory of MSG's now abandoned sale to Liberty is long, varied and more than a little scatty.

Formed by initial owners Jose Aznar and Scott Swid in 2021, the MSG company was essentially born from the original Venturi team that competed in Formula E between 2014 and 2022 and based in Monaco.

The team formed an alliance with Stellantis via the Maserati brand for the start of the Gen3 era in 2023 but experienced a fraught campaign - with a massive amount of crash damage via car-destroying accidents in Cape Town, Diriyah and Rome.

But it was the commercial structure of the team - in which Maserati had exclusive prominence on the car via its initial deal - that meant attracting other significant partners was difficult. This contributed to Aznar and Swid backing away from the squad at the end of 2024 and a potential new owner stepping in.

The Race reported extensively on the collapse of those plans in March 2025. They centred upon the non-delivery of initial financial commitments by the would-be buyer Brooklyn Earick. He re-emerged in the media last September with a bizarre attempt to buy Tottenham Hotspur football club, a self-promoted bid that was "unequivocally rejected" by the Premier League club.

The MSG team's licence reverted to Formula E Operations, as per the commercial agreement signed by all entrants and to ensure the then outfit could continue as a going concern.

Why the Liberty-related plan faded

The Race became aware earlier this year that a newly formed branch of Liberty - known as Liberty Global Motorsports Ltd - was scheduled to take over the MSG entity and thus become the licence holder of the Citroen grid slot, which had been in Formula E Operations' hands since late 2024. 

This plan changed last month, due in part to significant lobbying, ill-feeling and pressure from teams and manufacturers on the grid, who believed it to be a flagrant conflict of interest.

A multi-year deal with Stellantis, owner of the Citroen brand, to own and commercially enhance the MSG entry was scoped out and developed but ultimately fizzled out last month.

Public details of the planned takeover were limited but The Race uncovered some key details of the intended deal. The fresh structure had been set for Liberty Global to buy the licence via the SPV to acquire the team and add into Liberty Global's non-core growth asset ventures portfolio. An aim for the venture was suspected to be for other investors to enter and dilute Liberty's share of ownership in the future. 

Last weekend in Berlin, Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds described this situation to The Race as Liberty "trying to do the right thing by the championship" and originally being "interested in investing in it".

Addressing the concern of the teams on there being conflicts of interest, Dodds added: "There was a lot of noise in the system about it, and I get that because some people were thinking 'does it create conflicts of interest?'

"I think in the end the last thing they [Liberty] want to do at a time when we're about to launch a brand new car, and everything feels like we're on the precipice of the big kick-on, is- they did not want to create any noise, negative noise across the system. So, whilst there was discussions about it, it isn't happening."

On Paretta's appointment to MSG, Dodds said that she "certainly hasn't been really working with anything for us [FEO] since the end of last year".

Liberty is believed to have originally made a point to rival teams and manufacturers that it would not have had any direct influence in technical or operational running of the Citroen Racing team, which would have and still will continue to be conducted by Stellantis Motorsport in conjunction with the Citroen brand.

However, spending on marketing or promotion of the team, and bringing additional commercial partners, is now the key objective for a future investment and/or acquisition, all of which Paretta is majoring on immediately anyway via her new role.

The SPV created by Liberty for the originally planned new-look MSG was to be seen as a growth asset for the all-electric world championship.

The benefits for Formula E of the Liberty arm owning the team were believed to have been that it would remove FEO itself from any involvement over the ownership or payment of any bills, which were added to the significant debt of MSG from the 2022-2026 period.

Internally at Formula E the original Liberty move was being viewed as a good news story because executives there were believed to look at the move as protecting and enhancing the value of the other team franchises at the moment, too.

The Race understands that, as part of the condition to the original, but now disregarded, plan of Liberty acquiring MSG, reinvestment into the growth of the championship would have been provided for all of the teams via such topics as new calendar locations and marketing investments. 

The current MSG base in Monaco was set to be decommissioned after the end of the present season, with some staff relocating to Stellantis Motorsport's base in Satory, south of Paris. A commercial office for Liberty Global Motorsports Ltd was also planned to be set up in London, which would have been managed by Paretta. 

However, Paretta told The Race that "we'll keep the office in Monaco for now because maybe a new buyer may like a Monaco footprint".

"With the Liberty Global decision, the idea was we don't need that because the commercial office would have been in London and we wouldn't have needed Monaco.

"I'll be back and forth between those two places [Monaco and Citroen's base in Satory, Paris]."

Paretta's role explained

Paretta's role as managing director of MSG will involve her working alongside current Citroen team principal Cyril Blais. He joined the team in 2022 after working at Mahindra as an engineer to Alex Lynn, who took the team's most recent victory in July 2021.

Blais took over at MSG from Rossiter in September 2023 after the former Formula 1 tester and Super Formula race winner left abruptly. Blais helped steer the team through the chaotic 2024 when it became rudderless from an ownership standpoint and its licence reverted to FEO.

Talking to The Race about her role, Paretta said: "The reality is that the team, for at least 14 months and perhaps even longer, hasn't been commercially focused and there hasn't really been anybody in that role.

"It's been stagnant and it hasn't been able to grow, get new partners and sponsors in and also just shore up the business, improve operations, look at costs and look at all the things that would go in the day-to-day operations of running a viable business.

"Because it's almost been frozen in time, it's in the same state as it was 14 months ago - so if it's for sale again, the idea is let's shore it up, make it a living, breathing, healthy business because that's going to attract more people," she added.

Paretta will also oversee the movement of some MSG staff from Monaco to Satory.

"Going into next season there's this technical partnership with Citroen and we physically have to move some of that technical staff to France and we're late," she explained.

"We're at the critical time now where we have to do that - and so in order to do that we've got to establish a French subsidiary where those people will sit. All that stuff time is ticking to get that done."