CFC publishes open letter to FIDE
A more Diplomatic approach
Having failed to impress acting FIDE president Makropoulos with CFC representative Hal Bond’s hardball letter of last week (which Makropoulos shrugged off with predictable cavaleir indifference) the CFC president Drkulec followed up with an open letter to the same Makropoulos.
I present the letter in pdf for those who wish to read it in full. While very well written – no doubt Druklec got considerable help in drafting it – it is unlikely to elicit a more sublime response from the FIDE office.
The politely worded letter, unfortunately, does not address ulterior or mischievous motives behind the unprovoked, aggressive and clearly co-ordinated actions of Chief Arbiter Tomasz Delega and Organizer Zurab Azmaiparashvili on Anton Kovalyov just 10 minutes before the 3rd round was to begin.
Readers should recall the very unpleasant ‘cheating scandal’ at the 2015 European Women’s Championship (held in Chakvi, Georgia) where Delega and Azmaiparashvili were also Chief Arbiter/Organizer, and where considerable international media controversy was created and encouraged by both gentlemen. For example, the letters submitted by the protestors–for which they were later sanctioned– were suggested in the first place by the Chief Arbiter!
“Why did they allow such a bad thing to happen?”
When the FIDE ethics committee delivered its report on this ugly incident earlier this year (also see link to my blog article mentioned above), which sanctioned the players openly accusing Sandu of outright cheating, there was mention of inappropriate behaviour on the part of both Delega and Azmaiparashvili, though they were not specifically identified or named. (FIDE !)
From Chess.com on the FIDE ethics report
ChessCom , on May 11 of this year, quoted the ACP’s criticism of the FIDE ethics report,
Mihea Sandu, in her angry response to the ethics committee’s report, agreed but went out of the way to further criticize their (the tournament officials) behaviour and their pro-active roles in letting the situation get completely out of control, suggesting a certain degree of complicity:
This ugly incident in Georgia involving Delega and Azmaiparashvili almost destroyed Sandu’s life…(you should read her account in the link above) and the similarity with the Kovalyov incident is striking. Such FIDE officials should not be allowed to destroy reputations and lives and then get away with impunity.
Such a view was echoed in an Indian news article published on the 16th of this month concerning Delega and Azmaiparashvili’s behaviour in the Kovalyov incident:
