Opinion
This year, international chess at the highest level has seen the emergence of a seediness that seemed impossible just a few years ago. Yes, we've known for years that FIDE's president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov serves chess at the behest of Putin and the Kremlin running errands for Putin by meeting with the likes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al Assad under cover of delivering chess sets to the needy of the Third World. Those who try to dig for the truth behind his financial fortune and the specifics of his leadership of the autonomous Kalmykian republic do so at their peril. The murder in 1998 of opposition newspaper reporter Larisa Yudina by associates of Ilyumzhinov illustrates the risk level.
On August 25th in Moscow, Ilyumzhinov was barred from boarding a Delta Airlines flight departing Moscow for NYC. The reason is that he is still on the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury sanctions list for alleged dealings in oil between Assad's Syria and ISIS.
Enter Agon ,Ltd. to which FIDE has contracted promotional rights to the World Chess Championship and other major chess events like the Candidates' tournament to choose the challenger for the WCC. Agon was formed by Andrew Paulson, an expat American living in Moscow. Ilyumzhinov is purported to be secret owner of Agon. Agon's relationship to the off-shore corporation Chess Lane, which acquired certain FIDE promotional rights from Ilyumzhinov and his ownership interest in Global Chess, BV has recently come to light with the leaking of the Panama Papers. Paulson sold Agon to its present owner Ilya Merenzon who runs the corporation as its CEO. (It is still unclear what financial interest, if any, Ilyumzhinov has is Agon) Paulson and Merenzon's business dealings date back to at least 2007 when Paulson and Merenzon founded Russia! magazine. Both have brought their dealings to NYC, perhaps most notably in the company of NY Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov and the Snob crowd of Global Russians in NYC. http://nymag.com/news/features/66287/ http://mprokhorov.com/media/inthenews/137/
Overviews of these complex, often semi-hidden, dealings can be found in two Guardian articles:
And now Phosagro, the Moscow based company with Russian oligarchic ties to Vlad Putin has been named the sponsor of the WCC match scheduled for November. The first owner of PhosAgro was Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, the formerly close ally of Vladimir Putin who had a falling out with Putin over the matter of Yukos Gas in Russia. In 2011 it was reported that Russian billionaire and London resident Andrey Grigoryevich Guryev owned 71% of PhosAgro. Vladimir Stefanovich Litvinenko, Putin’s former campaign manager is reported to be a 10% owner of PhosAgro. (The ownership interests of Guryev and Litvinenko were confirmed on the London Stock exchange in 2011 when PhosAgro was floated on that exchange)
Our ancient, beautiful game,chess, deserves better than this. Unless and until national chess federations that respect the rule of law act to reform FIDE or break away to form an honest, non-suspect international governing body chess will not be more than the international laughing stock it is rapidly becoming.
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