IllusionOf resigns as President of FIDE

[Sid Belzberg]

Re: Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

April 7, 2017

The saga continues:

Statement of FIDE President Kirsan Ilyuzhinov

FIDE

06 April 2017

I refer to my declaration regarding my provisional withdrawal from any legal, financial and business operations of FIDE made at the FIDE Presidential Board on 6 December 2015.

This decision was triggered by the announcement of 25 November 2015 of the US Department of the Treasury that I had been listed in the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) sanction list. As a victim of unfounded accusations, I was certain that I would rapidly succeed in proving my innocence. I did not suspect at the time that I would be deprived even of a possibility to effectively defend myself due to systematic violations of my due process rights. This is why I confidently declared to the Presidential Board that I would withdraw from legal, financial and business operations of FIDE until I am removed from the OFAC sanction list.

As my experience has shown, however, not only OFAC takes its decisions behind closed doors, without notice, but there is also a lack of adequate procedure in place to effectively challenge the designation. Thus, I was not entitled to any type of hearing or trial to contest my designation in the sanction list. OFAC’s accusations were supported either by mere speculations or faulty intelligence. In addition, I could not obtain access to all information necessary to defend myself as a big part of this information was “classified”.

Therefore, in disrespect of the guarantees provided by all universal and regional human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, my due process rights have been effectively violated. My case is not just one of a kind, there appear to be systematic violations, some of which were recognized by US Courts. Thus, OFAC’s designation procedure has already been found unconstitutional by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the light of the above, I have to put end to my provisional withdrawal from exercising certain powers as FIDE President, By the present notice, I am revoking my declaration of 6 December 2015 and, starting from today, will fully exercise my powers as the FIDE President. Whenever my listing in the OFAC’s sanction list is an obstacle for me to represent FIDE, I will delegate specific tasks to other persons.

Gens una sumus! We are one family

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
President

If that is to be believed FIDE would be officially toxic to do business with.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

April 7, 2017

The saga continues:

Statement of FIDE President Kirsan Ilyuzhinov

FIDE

06 April 2017

I refer to my declaration regarding my provisional withdrawal from any legal, financial and business operations of FIDE made at the FIDE Presidential Board on 6 December 2015.

This decision was triggered by the announcement of 25 November 2015 of the US Department of the Treasury that I had been listed in the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) sanction list. As a victim of unfounded accusations, I was certain that I would rapidly succeed in proving my innocence. I did not suspect at the time that I would be deprived even of a possibility to effectively defend myself due to systematic violations of my due process rights. This is why I confidently declared to the Presidential Board that I would withdraw from legal, financial and business operations of FIDE until I am removed from the OFAC sanction list.

As my experience has shown, however, not only OFAC takes its decisions behind closed doors, without notice, but there is also a lack of adequate procedure in place to effectively challenge the designation. Thus, I was not entitled to any type of hearing or trial to contest my designation in the sanction list. OFAC’s accusations were supported either by mere speculations or faulty intelligence. In addition, I could not obtain access to all information necessary to defend myself as a big part of this information was “classified”.

Therefore, in disrespect of the guarantees provided by all universal and regional human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, my due process rights have been effectively violated. My case is not just one of a kind, there appear to be systematic violations, some of which were recognized by US Courts. Thus, OFAC’s designation procedure has already been found unconstitutional by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the light of the above, I have to put end to my provisional withdrawal from exercising certain powers as FIDE President, By the present notice, I am revoking my declaration of 6 December 2015 and, starting from today, will fully exercise my powers as the FIDE President. Whenever my listing in the OFAC’s sanction list is an obstacle for me to represent FIDE, I will delegate specific tasks to other persons.

Gens una sumus! We are one family

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
President

[Neil Frarey]

Re: Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

dufus......

You're getting more entertaining with every post! But not as entertaining as your fellow Dem Susan Rice.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

It seems you share a common ignorance with K. Iiyumzhinov ... that being the lack of understanding of how rich the history is of chess in Canada.

But hey Paul Bonham, once again I'll forgive you of that.

Whew! I'm so relieved! Really dodged a bullet there.

Because very few (far to few) folks have bothered to do what I've done with chess ... and that includes spending days on end going through file box after file box after file box of Canada's rich chess history over at our Library and Archives Canada!!!

If you bothered or even cared to spend the energy and time going through all that material, you'd come away with the 1st hand knowledge that chess is already one of the people's games ...but you don't care ...do you. Obviously not!

Here's a link to get you right with me and the rich history of chess in Canada:

http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Search/Pages/results.aspx?k=,chess

...and that is just the stuff they have managed digitize so far!

I went through every single piece material one after another after another ... these file boxes are what we ARE as a nation! The material was and still is submitted by anyone who thinks it should be housed in OUR permanent collection. For days I blissfully went through stacks of unpublished Canadian chess manuscripts and books, drooled over chess stamps, humbled by chess club's minute books dated late 1800's!!! Photo after photo ... and on and on it goes.

Chess already IS one of the people's games!

All you have to do is go take a look.

Uhhhhhhh.... hey dufus...... you're only making my point for me! My point is EXACTLY that chess is already "one of the people's games". All your political sloganeering is empty of meaning and relevance. You are a political hack, just like all the others including your hero Trump...

[aside: ....who is now blaming the previous administration of Obama for the Syria situation.... yet back when Obama made his "red line" comment about Syria, Trump tweeted in all caps: "DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA — IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN." I'm not even going to link to that, it's documented and it's fact. Do your own research. Trump is, as comedian Louis C.K. said last night on Colbert, a gross, pathetic lying sack of shit.]

What I've been doing is bringing chess back into mainstream Canada ... and my accomplishments are many ... but by far not enough. With the CFC I will place its brand (which greatly needs to be developed) into modern mainstream Canada ... not for the glory of the CFC elite top 10% ... but rather by celebrating the CFC common 90%!

Place the brand! Work hard doing it!

And, remembering all along the way the rich history of chess in Canada.

Before you "place the brand", you have to FIX THE PRODUCT!

And I haven't seen any of your plans on how to do that. You can't put the cart before the horse... well you can if you want to look utterly stupid.

What does it mean, "celebrating the CFC common 90%"? What is that going to be, a full page in John Upper's publication saying "Thanks 90%! We love you! This page paid for by Neil Frarey"?

Most of the 90% don't want to be "celebrated". Most of them don't want empty meaningless drivel. Hell, a lot of them don't want any change at all. They are happy to fork over their disposable income and their chance at a social life to play hours and hours of intense chess. Good for them, I do not criticize them, that is what they like.

But SOME of the 90% want to have at least a shot of winning something meaningful once in a while. Which cannot ever happen with chess being a pure skill game. And so those members of the 90% are always going to revolve in and out of organized chess.

As the people behind the Millionaire Chess Open found out 3 years in a row. They upped the prizes for the 90%, but to do it they had to charge huge entry fees. And guess what, the 90% mostly stayed away and lots of money was lost for investors.

These are the fundamentals that are never going to change as long as chess remains a pure skill game. You will be pushing against an immovable object. Perhaps I could learn some chess history, but YOU need to learn about these fundamentals. Oh, but I forgot, you're just a political hack. You just want the office.

[Hugh Brodie]

Re: Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

See my post from two years ago about the Canadian Open trophy. It's been sitting in the FQE office ever since, and no one from the CFC seems to want it!

http://forum.chesstalk.com/showthread.php?13526-Some-old-CFC-trophies-found&highlight=trophy

[Neil Frarey]

Re: To Live Life is Not To Cross a Field

The link that Neil supplied gives very few items that a chess player would be interested in (and Firefox won't let me open any of them) - almost every entry refers to a Canadian census and a person named "Chess" from that year. I was hoping to find something like the LeDain archives all scanned. :-)

I know that name I saw it there ... to bad they haven't spent enough time on digitizing all 'our' stuff.

As a point of interest Hugh, for your Montreal CC, if I'm not mistaken I remember seeing a very old club minute book. I'll be back down there in a couple of weeks or so to get some get some photos reprinted, one in particular the original Canadian Open trophy!

I want to find this trophy real bad. It went missing. I'll start a new thread on the matter.

[Hugh Brodie]

Re: To Live Life is Not To Cross a Field

The link that Neil supplied gives very few items that a chess player would be interested in (and Firefox won't let me open any of them) - almost every entry refers to a Canadian census and a person named "Chess" from that year. I was hoping to find something like the LeDain archives all scanned. :-)

[Neil Frarey]

Re: Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

Are we sure that letter wasn't written by Neil Frarey? "Make Chess a People's Game".... sounds like one of Neil's empty, meaningless statements.

It seems you share a common ignorance with K. Iiyumzhinov ... that being the lack of understanding of how rich the history is of chess in Canada.

But hey Paul Bonham, once again I'll forgive you of that.

Because very few (far to few) folks have bothered to do what I've done with chess ... and that includes spending days on end going through file box after file box after file box of Canada's rich chess history over at our Library and Archives Canada!!!

If you bothered or even cared to spend the energy and time going through all that material, you'd come away with the 1st hand knowledge that chess is already one of the people's games ...but you don't care ...do you. Obviously not!

Here's a link to get you right with me and the rich history of chess in Canada:

http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Search/Pages/results.aspx?k=,chess

...and that is just the stuff they have managed digitize so far!

I went through every single piece material one after another after another ... these file boxes are what we ARE as a nation! The material was and still is submitted by anyone who thinks it should be housed in OUR permanent collection. For days I blissfully went through stacks of unpublished Canadian chess manuscripts and books, drooled over chess stamps, humbled by chess club's minute books dated late 1800's!!! Photo after photo ... and on and on it goes.

Chess already IS one of the people's games!

All you have to do is go take a look.

What I've been doing is bringing chess back into mainstream Canada ... and my accomplishments are many ... but by far not enough. With the CFC I will place its brand (which greatly needs to be developed) into modern mainstream Canada ... not for the glory of the CFC elite top 10% ... but rather by celebrating the CFC common 90%!

Place the brand! Work hard doing it!

And, remembering all along the way the rich history of chess in Canada.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

Ilyumzhinov resigns as president of FIDE

April 5, 2017

Hold your horses! Maybe we should let Kirsan remain FIDE President. We have misjudged the man. He will give us money!

FIDE

Moscow, 04 April 2017

Dear chess friends!

We have done a great job together: united the chess world, increased the number of national federations and official tournaments, attracted new technologies and increased interest in the ancient game. We set an ambitious task to bring the number of chess players to one billion.

For its implementation, I intend to lay the foundations of a systematic work that will let me achieve this goal. Even being under sanctions, I registered a charitable foundation “Kirsan Fund” in the United States.

Its activities will cover North and South America. This month, I plan to open the Kirsan Fund in Brussels (it will work in Europe and Africa) and in Seoul (it will cover Asia, Australia and Oceania). I intend to invest 10 million dollars in each of them.
The mission of the foundations will be the introduction of chess into the education system and creation of chess schools. In addition to the “Chess in Schools” programme, we will promote new projects: “Chess in villages”, “Chess in families” and “Chess for people with disabilities”.

I started helping the chess world even before I was elected President of FIDE. Garry Kasparov addressed me with a request to help hold the Championship of Russia in 1994. Greece refused to host the World Chess Olympiad and Kasparov suggested transferring it to Moscow in the same year. I granted 100,000 dollars for the prize fund of the Championship and more than one million dollars for holding of the Olympiad. I organized 14 men’s and women’s championships of Russia using my own money. I granted tens of millions of dollars to chess over the years.

Now in addition to the professional sports, I intend to focus on the development of chess and to make chess a People’s Game. Anyone who is truly committed to the spirit of chess and the principles of FIDE can take part in the work of the foundation that I have organized. The experience and authority of the national chess federations and fans of chess would be very useful for us.
Gens una sumus! We are one family! Let’s make chess a People’s Game!

President
K. Ilyumzhinov

https://www.chess.com/news/view/as-support-deteriorates-ilyumzhinov-announces-30-million-investment-6714

_________

$30 Million - what a guy!

Are we sure that letter wasn't written by Neil Frarey? "Make Chess a People's Game".... sounds like one of Neil's empty, meaningless statements.

Meanwhile, Kirsan's aliens are very busy on the dark side of the moon, printing money!

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

Ilyumzhinov resigns as president of FIDE

April 5, 2017

Hold your horses! Maybe we should let Kirsan remain FIDE President. We have misjudged the man. He will give us money!

FIDE

Moscow, 04 April 2017

Dear chess friends!

We have done a great job together: united the chess world, increased the number of national federations and official tournaments, attracted new technologies and increased interest in the ancient game. We set an ambitious task to bring the number of chess players to one billion.

For its implementation, I intend to lay the foundations of a systematic work that will let me achieve this goal. Even being under sanctions, I registered a charitable foundation “Kirsan Fund” in the United States.

Its activities will cover North and South America. This month, I plan to open the Kirsan Fund in Brussels (it will work in Europe and Africa) and in Seoul (it will cover Asia, Australia and Oceania). I intend to invest 10 million dollars in each of them.
The mission of the foundations will be the introduction of chess into the education system and creation of chess schools. In addition to the “Chess in Schools” programme, we will promote new projects: “Chess in villages”, “Chess in families” and “Chess for people with disabilities”.

I started helping the chess world even before I was elected President of FIDE. Garry Kasparov addressed me with a request to help hold the Championship of Russia in 1994. Greece refused to host the World Chess Olympiad and Kasparov suggested transferring it to Moscow in the same year. I granted 100,000 dollars for the prize fund of the Championship and more than one million dollars for holding of the Olympiad. I organized 14 men’s and women’s championships of Russia using my own money. I granted tens of millions of dollars to chess over the years.

Now in addition to the professional sports, I intend to focus on the development of chess and to make chess a People’s Game. Anyone who is truly committed to the spirit of chess and the principles of FIDE can take part in the work of the foundation that I have organized. The experience and authority of the national chess federations and fans of chess would be very useful for us.
Gens una sumus! We are one family! Let’s make chess a People’s Game!

President
K. Ilyumzhinov

https://www.chess.com/news/view/as-support-deteriorates-ilyumzhinov-announces-30-million-investment-6714

_________

$30 Million - what a guy!

[Wayne Komer]

Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

Ilyumzhinov resigns as President of FIDE

April 4, 2017

From the official FIDE website, bolding is mine:

http://www.fide.com/component/content/article/1-fide-news/10110-statement-of-continental-president-for-america.html

Statement of Continental President for America Jorge Vega

Tuesday, 04 April 2017

To: CCA Member Federations

It is well known that differences emerged at the last meeting of the Presidential Board held in Athens in March.

Firstly, and in order to clarify, I should like to inform you that the subject of Mr. Ilyumzhinov's resignation as President of FIDE was never on the agenda or proposed by any member of the PB during the meetings, it was Mr. Ilyumzhinov who mentioned it on three occasions at the first meeting and in the second, which took place behind closed doors, announced on more than one occasion that he was resigning the Presidency in the midst of a very strong emotional crisis.

I can reiterate that what triggered this crisis was not a request by the PB to abandon the position of President but a proposal of Mr. Ilyumzhinov regarding AGON, the company to which FIDE has granted the rights of execution of the events of the World Championship Cycle, which was overwhelmingly rejected by the Presidential Board.

Due to the importance of the situation, FIDE published the news in its web page but this was denied by Mr. Ilyumzhinov who said that he did not sign anything and described it as false news in some media. In this regard, Mr. Makropoulos clarified what had happened in a letter, adding that everything could be verified as PB meetings are recorded.

Afterwards, innumerable articles have been published that are impossible to comment on. The only thing I can say is that neither the USCF nor any former FIDE Presidential candidate has been involved in this matter and that Mr. Nigel Freeman, Executive Director of FIDE, only fulfilled the duties inherent to his position.

As an antecedent to this unpleasant situation, it is worth remembering that as a result of the sanctions imposed on Mr. Ilyumzhinov by the Department of the Treasury of the USA he passed all the functions inherent to his position to the Deputy President, Mr. Georgios Makropoulos, in a meeting of the PB in December 2015 to avoid those sanctions affecting FIDE.

An extraordinary meeting of the PB has been convened for April 10 in accordance with the powers of the Deputy President.

Without diminishing the support and contributions of Mr. Ilyumzhinov to chess and FIDE all these years, which we must recognize and thank him, it is undeniable that the sanctions imposed limit potential sponsors to support FIDE events.

We must all be aware of the decisions taken at the next meeting of the PB that I hope it will clarify once and for all the current situation.

Jorge Vega
Continental President for America

[Sid Belzberg]

Re: sanctions are a possible factor but ...

Does that bring to mind anyone else? Trump?
There is a reason I refer to K.I. as "IllusionOf".
FIDE has a long history of corruption - a lot like some other world wide governong boards: FIFA, the Olympics etc.

Hillary Clinton was a far worst choice as far as that goes. Garry was not.

[Kerry Liles]

Re: sanctions are a possible factor but ...

Here is the thing. Chess players are supposed to be a smart group trained in trying to anticipate scenarios well before they come to pass. In 2014 it was obvious that the possibility of sanctions interfering with Kirsan's ability to be a viable leader of FIDE was anticipated and discussed. It was even discussed here on chesstalk. So now FIDE's meager cash reserves of $900,000.00 are used up to pay Iran's bill because anything Kirsan is involved with is toxic due to the curse of sanctions inflicted on him (among other problems).

Chess players have themselves to blame for not overthrowing the leadership of these corrupt Federations that supported Kirsan and electing the team to run Fide that chessplayers themselves did not want. You saw it here on chesstalk, the poll overwhelmingly supported Garry but the CFC did not give a fuck about what the actual membership wanted. Ditto for countless other Federations that succumbed to the pathetic crumbs that Russia had to offer them. In the case of Canada the CFC did not even get all of the crumbs they were promised. They were played for the suckers that the CFC executives who were involved truly turned out to be.
FIDE has a high likelihood of being defunct soon...exactly the bullshit scenario the CFC projected on Garry who had the full resources of a billionaire backing who pledged to plunk ten million dollars into FIDE immediately. Instead FIDE has a corrupt president that treats FIDE and its contracts like his own personal company. The empty FIDE bank account tells the sad and unnecessary story.

has a corrupt president that treats FIDE and its contracts like his own personal company

Does that bring to mind anyone else? Trump?
There is a reason I refer to K.I. as "IllusionOf".
FIDE has a long history of corruption - a lot like some other world wide governong boards: FIFA, the Olympics etc.

[Neil Frarey]

Re: sanctions are a possible factor but ...

Chess players have themselves to blame for not overthrowing the leadership of these corrupt Federations that supported Kirsan and electing the team to run Fide that chessplayers themselves did not want. You saw it here on chesstalk, the poll overwhelmingly supported Garry but the CFC did not give a fuck about what the actual membership wanted. Ditto for countless other Federations that succumbed to the pathetic crumbs that Russia had to offer them. In the case of Canada the CFC did not even get all of the crumbs they were promised. They were played for the suckers that the CFC executive truly turned out to be.
FIDE has a high likelihood of being defunct soon...exactly the bullshit scenario the CFC projected on Garry who had the full resources of a billionaire backing him who pledged to plunk ten million dollars into FIDE immediately. Instead FIDE has a corrupt president that treats FIDE and its contracts like his own personal company. The empty FIDE bank account tells the sad and unnecessary story.

Another hallmark of Drkulec's grand vision of dribs & drabs ...and for what?

80k FIDE sleight of hand ...LOL!

The pigeons have come home to roost.

[Sid Belzberg]

Re: sanctions are a possible factor but ...

No, no..sanctions against ilyumzhinov, not against Iran is what he meant.

Here is the thing. Chess players are supposed to be a smart group trained in trying to anticipate scenarios well before they come to pass. In 2014 it was obvious that the possibility of sanctions interfering with Kirsan's ability to be a viable leader of FIDE was anticipated and discussed. It was even discussed here on chesstalk. So now FIDE's meager cash reserves of $900,000.00 are used up to pay Iran's bill because anything Kirsan is involved with is toxic due to the curse of sanctions inflicted on him (among other problems).

Chess players have themselves to blame for not overthrowing the leadership of these corrupt Federations that supported Kirsan and electing the team to run Fide that chessplayers themselves did not want. You saw it here on chesstalk, the poll overwhelmingly supported Garry but the CFC did not give a fuck about what the actual membership wanted. Ditto for countless other Federations that succumbed to the pathetic crumbs that Russia had to offer them. In the case of Canada the CFC did not even get all of the crumbs they were promised. They were played for the suckers that the CFC executives who were involved truly turned out to be.
FIDE has a high likelihood of being defunct soon...exactly the bullshit scenario the CFC projected on Garry who had the full resources of a billionaire backing who pledged to plunk ten million dollars into FIDE immediately. Instead FIDE has a corrupt president that treats FIDE and its contracts like his own personal company. The empty FIDE bank account tells the sad and unnecessary story.