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PART I: LEGAL ANALYSIS OF THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP REUNIFICATION.
According to its own Statutes, FIDE is a non profit organisation, based on a famous article 61 in the Swiss Civil Code, and its headquarters are in Switzerland. This means that FIDE is subject to Swiss law, which does have far reaching consequences, as we will later see. According to its statutes, FIDE is an organisation, whose members are not individuals, but national chess federations. This means that no chess-player is individually a member of FIDE, but only a member of his own federation, which is itself a member of FIDE. Consequently, no rule of FIDE itself can govern any chess-player, and the obligations set forth in FIDE Statutes are not opposable to any chess-player!
However, FIDE itself has bound itself in its own Charter to set-up Competition Rules, among them the rules governing the World Chess Championship!
This means that national teams, representing national chess federations who engage in FIDE competition, are automatically regulated by FIDE Statutes, and the FIDE does not have to sign any contracts to its member federations, prior to beginning any FIDE chess event!
However, in individual competitions, the players engaged in playing a FIDE event have to sign a contract with FIDE.
These contracts are ruled by Swiss civil law, since FIDE is a Swiss organisation! But FIDE can also choose to put a clause stating that in case of conflict, the Lausanne sports committee has to be seized, instead of the Swiss civil court! Of course, no player is really obliged to accept such a clause in his individual contract with FIDE (I would not personally advise him that, because simply the civil jurisdiction offers the player much more guarantees!).
Well, if you wonder why am I recalling these general legal matters, is simply because they are at the heart of the matter in the last events in Corus around Fide World Chess Champion Ruslan Ponomariov crisis with Fide officials, Mr omuku and IGM Azmaiparshvili.
It's only obvious that these FIDE officials simply want Ruslan Ponomariov to sign the contract for his match against Garry Kasparov, under FIDE auspices.
Remember my previous analysis: neither Ponomariov nor Kasparov are FIDE members! So FIDE has to make them sign a contract each. But now everyone knows that you never sign a contract in a hurry! Because, a contract has to be cautiously studied! Every word in it can have far reaching consequences (just like, any move in chess can lead you to a hopeless position or to winning one!). Well, chess moves are never innocent, and they have to be pondered carefully! And the same goes for contracts! If this sounds logical to everybody, can anyone explain to me why FIDE officials had to come on 10th and 11th January to hassle World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov, and make him blindly sign the contract they offered him?
Well, any party that proposes a contract lets the other party:
1) get all the necessary information, and in particular, have a copy of ALL DOCUMENTS relating to the object of the contract! But not FIDE, since they want Ponomariov to sign a contract to accept to play against Kasparov, under the conditions reached by the Prague agreements! Well, but they refuse to let him read these famous Prague Agreements! Did anyone in the world see them apart from the people who participated in them? That is very few people, among them, certainly Kasparov himself, but also Kramnik and Leko, and Einstein TV (the «owner» of the title Classical Chess World Champion: if that really means anything, I will create tomorrow a Paris based company claiming also to «own» this title! You bet?).
Anyhow, Mr Omuku's reaction on FIDE website to Ponomariov's letter to Mr Ilyumzhinov, FIDE President, is in itself very funny!
Mr Omuku pretends that Ponomariov had a copy of the Prague agreement and of Bled GA since Nov 2002, if we believe Mr Omuku, the Ukrainian federation got these copies, and Ponomariov's fax was not working! Well, in this case, the solution is simple: Please, Mr Omuku, fax them back to Ponomariov!
Or even better: make them public, so that all chess-players in the world can see them! After all, these Prague agreements are not a shared secret between FIDE/Enstein TV, Kramnik, Leko and Kasparov! Let's hope so, Mr Omuku!
2) After what was said concerning the usual way of negotiating contracts, and FIDE hidden Prague contract, it becomes completely obvious why FIDE officials had to rush to Ponomariov's hotel in Wijk aan Zee, to make sign under an ultimatum!
i guess that if i anybody tries to put such a pressure on anybody, just to make him sign blindly a contract, it's more likely that he would be charged of swindling (at least that's how it goes in French law!).
Well, this is Fide's threat to Ponomariov: If you do not sign our contract, FIDE President will take the decision to replace you with Ivanchuk!
This makes me seriously laugh! I hope that FIDE has good Swiss lawyers (I am sure, they do!), because, if they really execute this pseudo-threat, they would run in trouble!
Well: Ponomariov is the official FIDE Chess World Champion, and according to WCCC FIDE regulations, only the FIDE World Champion, i.e., at this day, Ruslan Ponomariov, can defend his title!
Suppose that FIDE replaces Ponomariov by anybody else! Then:
1) just remember that FIDE is ruled by Swiss civil law.
2) let Ponomariov get a good Swiss lawyer.
3 ) let the lawyer attract FIDE to court.
Guess what will happen? The Swiss court will apply Swiss civil law (very similar to the French civil law!), and then annihilate any kind of fide chess world championship in which Ponomariov will not take part! A simple as this, with, moreover, money that FIDE will have to pay Ponomariov as a compensation! Well, if you carry out this same analysis, you can immediately also deduce that the present match between Kasparov (instead of Ponomariov), as FIDE Champion, against the computer program Junior, is doomed to the same fate!
Yes, Kasparov-Junior match, sponsored officially by FIDE as world championship match Man-Computer is illegal according to FIDE own statuses!
PART II: A COMMERCIAL PROFIT INTERPRETATION OF THE SUPPOSEDLY «NON-PROFIT» FIDE ORGANISATION.
Continuing our reasoning about FIDE practices, and without entering into much details, it would also be clearly apparent that some FIDE manoeuvres are not as innocent as FIDE officials want us to believe! First of all, why during the secret negotiations leading to the famous secret Prague agreements, some of the best players in the world were kept totally away from these talks?
After all, it's very surprising that players like Ivanchuk, Anand, Shirov, and many others, who are all legitimately eligible to have a word, or even to participate in the Reunification process, were kept completely out of it, by FIDE itself! If FIDE were really a non-profit organisation, as its own Statutes claim it, then all these important matters had to be discussed.
Democratically, among FIDE members, that is (let's not forget that!) national member federations, acting on behalf of all the chess-players of the world (Well, FIDE's motto is not just that: Gens Una Sumus!).
But the mere fact that negotiations on Reunification took place, very discreetly, between FIDE and a commercial company, Einstein TV, and a happy few players, with the help of some middlemen (player's agents, IGM Seirawan, Mrs Ojjeh, etc), so exactly along the mood of ordinary commercial negotiations, between usual business for-profit-companies, only sheds more light on the behaviour of some FIDE officials, who just use FIDE non-profit status and its huge infrastructure derived from the contributions of its national member federations, to dwell money on a business like basis, to diverting it from going into the pockets of the majority of professional high level chess-players (I mean, Ponomariov, Ivanchuk, Anand, Shirov, and many others!).
Well, only the happy few that were allowed to be part of Prague negotiations, did have the right to a share of the cake (well: TV/internet and media Rights, dear!).
PART III / A FEW OPEN QUESTIONS TO FIDE.
Finally, let me address directly my open questions to FIDE officials themselves:
Q1: If you pretend that you forwarded the complete copy of the Prague agreements and the Bled Nov 2002 GA to World Champion Ponomariov, why not make them publicly available to everyone in the world, by just publishing them on FIDE website? Would that not be just normal, since FIDE Charter stipulates that it's working for the interest of the Chess game, and that all chess-players belong to one family, so that no discrimination can be exercised against any chess-player by FIDE!
The whole Chess world community is now a witness to the fairness and loyalty of FIDE officials, and would put to a test Mr Omuku statement that Prague documents were actually communicated to World Champion Ponomariov!
Q2: FIDE is officially a non-profit organisation. Why, then, in every contract, FIDE insists so much that players sign contracts that are completely unfavourable to them, in which they have to give up all Media/TV/Internet rights to FIDE itself? Why, besides, FIDE has to take 20% of their prize money?
Why FIDE is signing always contracts with sponsors and chess organisers, in the back of the player's themselves, in which it reserves to itself all the financial advantages of the tournament, and guarantees to its officials (president, committee members, etc) more advantages, than the players themselves? (Example: the president must travel 1st class, have a suite in 1st class hotel, etc, while the players do not enjoy these same conditions! Do the FIDE officials make the show, or rather the players? Who then needs to get rewarded by the tournament organiser and sponsor?).
Well, I am sure never to get an answer to this second question, because it's completely in the centre of FIDE's hypocrisy, to pretend being a non-profit organisation, purely working for the sake of chess and chess-players, while it's actually turned into a big machinery that generates money, in the usual business practice, to the sole profit of its managers!
Q3: by the way, what's the role of the business company: FIDE Commerce international limited? Just a profit corporation, belonging to FIDE managers, and whose purpose is to get from chess sponsors, the monetary counterpart to the Media/TV/Internet rights, that FIDE officials oblige chess-players to give up, if need be, by going as far as hassling them right to their hotel rooms (remember Azmaiparshvili and Omuku coming to Wijk aan Zee on 10/11 January in the middle of Corus tournament, to harass World Chess Champion Ponomariov, and completely shatter his mental concentration for the whole tournament! Well, even if you take a little exam, and you are bothered by these kind of shameful and mean practices, you can be made to miss your exam!).
These methods are really unworthy of the image of Chess, a noble game of wit and culture, that FIDE is normally destined to defend.
But it seems now that everything is rotten in FIDE Chess World.
Joel Bouard, Paris, France.
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