This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The president of world chess’s governing body is linked to a network of secret offshore companies that have obtained control of the lucrative commercial rights to the game since he took office, the Panama Papers cache of leaked documents reveal.



An investigation by the Guardian and Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung found documents which raise fresh concerns about the administration of a sport which for years has been mired in claims of corruption.



The disclosures pose particular questions for Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who has run the sport’s governing body, the World Chess Federation, or Fide, since 1995. Two years later Ilyumzhinov famously claimed to have been kidnapped by aliens.

A Russian multimillionaire with ties to the Kremlin, he had business dealings with offshore companies, the Panama Papers show, including an opaque chess firm registered in the British Virgin Islands.

Critics including two former World Chess Champions, the British grandmaster Nigel Short and others from the English Chess Federation accuse Ilyumzhinov of using his role as Fide president to promote Russian foreign policy.

There were further acrimonious claims in 2014 of vote-rigging, denied by Fide, when Ilyumzhinov beat his US-based rival Garry Kasparov to the Fide presidency.

In November 2015 the US treasury department sanctioned Ilyumzhinov, adding him to a list that includes Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. It said Ilyumzhinov had “materially assisted” and “acted on behalf of” Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and Syria’s central bank.

Between 1993 and 2010 Ilyumzhinov was president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia. The US treasury says that one of Ilyumzhinov’s aides was convicted of murdering an opposition journalist who “was investigating an offshore business registration mechanism in Kalmykia tied to Ilyumzhinov”.

Ilyumzhinov vigorously denies the US treasury claims and says he has hired a lawyer to contest them.

“Yes, I’ve met Assad. Yes, I have contacts and friends in Syria. Assad is the official president and I travel as head of Fide, which belongs to 177 [chess] federations. I have nothing to hide,” he told Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kirsan Ilyumzhinov with Muammar Gaddafi in June 2011. Photograph: AP

The Panama Papers shed fresh light on several murky companies set up to commercialise international chess. One of them was Global Chess BV. Ilyumzhinov established the firm in 2006 after he was re-elected Fide president. Its major owner, his defeated rival, Bessel Kok, had a minority stake.

In 2007 Ilyumzhinov bought Kok out. A memo was drawn up and published granting Global Chess and Ilyumzhinov the commercial rights to all Fide events including World Championship chess tournaments and TV coverage.

The same year, the Panama Papers show, Ilyumzhinov came up with a new plan for the future of the sport. He secretly sold his share in Global Chess to David Kaplan, a Russian-Israeli businessman with a model agency who was reportedly linked to a failed Lithuanian bank.



A 2008 document names Ilyumzhinov and appears to show him selling 999 shares in Global Chess BV to Chess Lane Limited, a company in the British Virgin Islands set up by Mossack Fonseca, the offshore law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers scandal. The BVI is notorious for its secrecy and last month refused to attend David Cameron’s anti-corruption summit in London.

Kaplan didn’t register Chess Lane in his own name but instead made his 26-year-old nephew, Eli Leibzon, its director. Leibzon’s father Avi became director of other offshore firms including Chess Line Ltd. In effect, the Israel-based Leibzons became the secret owners of the rights to world chess. Kaplan was put in charge of Fide’s new Moscow office and made its development CEO.

In 2010 Ilyumzhinov defeated Anatoly Karpov, the Russian world champion, in elections for Fide president. Karpov believes that Kaplan’s role in effect was to “collect the financial means” to back Ilyumzhinov’s campaign. “Kaplan didn’t distinguish himself in chess in any other way,” Karpov told Radio Svoboda.

In 2012 Fide’s commercial rights were transferred to another opaque company, Agon, registered in Jersey. A 2012 “Agon memorandum” suggested that Ilyumzhinov was to be a hidden beneficiary of Agon, owning a secret 51% stake. Ilyumzhinov said this draft was never enacted. Agon now has the rights to world chess. Its accounts are not public.



“Everything is in murk,” Nigel Short, a long-time Fide critic, said. He added: “I think there is very little distinction in Kirsan’s mind between Fide and himself.”

Short likened Fide’s inscrutable business dealings to those practised by football’s world governing body, Fifa. There was, he added, a clear conflict of interest between Ilyumzhinov’s role as Fide’s chief and his private business interests.

Asked if he had sold Global Chess to Chess Lane, Ilyumzhinov did not give an answer. He merely said of the offshore company: “It closed.” He added: “Chess Lane was David Kaplan.”

Ilyumzhinov denied any wrongdoing and said he had spent “millions” of his personal fortune on chess and chess development. All sides agree that up until 2000 Ilyumzhinov pumped substantial sums into the game, and underwrote the costs for major tournaments.

Ilyumzhinov said he had passed the draft Agon contract to Fide without signing it and had no beneficial interest in the firm. Fide said it was audited by one of the world’s biggest accounting firms, paid taxes in Switzerland and did not “use offshore entities in its commercial or financial activities”. Nor did it have any “direct or indirect shares”.

It described its activities as “completely transparent”. Its electoral processes were fair, it said, adding: “Fide only deals with chess and is politically neutral.” The Leibzons and Kaplan did not comment.

