A legal move from Karpov
First, here is the entire text distributed by White & Case, which is representing
the Karpov campaign and many major chess federations in the matter.
"Pursuant to the letter of their counsel, White & Case, sent on 2 July
2010 to FIDE Executive Director David Jarrett, the national chess federations
of France, Germany, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States, along with
Karpov 2010, Inc., will imminently file a Request for Arbitration against
FIDE with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland. In
view of confidentiality restrictions, no further information can be provided
until further notice."
No further information, but perhaps some speculation based on their recently
published demand for Ilyumzhinov's campaign documents by the same White
& Case team. It would appear that they are intent on proving that the nominations
of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov for FIDE president and of Beatriz Marinello for FIDE Vice
President are not legitimate. If the Lausanne court rules this to be the case,
it could disqualify the Ilyumzhinov
ticket completely and turn this September's FIDE election in Khanty-Mansiysk
into a one-horse race with Karpov as the only candidate. If Ms. Marinello is
disqualified that alone would disqualify the entire Ilyumzhinov ticket, since
according to the regulations one candidate must be a woman and the Chilean-born
American is the only woman on the ticket and the deadline for nominations has
passed.
Several national federations and the presidential campaign
of Anatoly Karpov filed a lawsuit against the World Chess Federation on
Thursday in the Court of
Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland. The lawsuit, which was filed
by White & Case, a
Manhattan firm, is seeking to have the ticket of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the incumbent
who is running for re-election, disqualified.
The lawsuit, which includes the chess federations of the United States, France,
Germany, Switzerland and Ukraine as plaintiffs, challenges the legitimacy of
Ilyumzhinov’s nominations by Russia, Argentina and Mexico. It also questions
the nominations of Beatriz Marinello for vice president on Ilyumzhinov’s slate.
As each candidate is required to have a slate to fill each major office in the
federation, and to have at least one candidate be a woman, Karpov is trying
to invalidate Ilyumzhinov’s candidacy by eliminating Marinello from his ticket.
The question of which candidate Russia is supporting has been a point of bitter
contention throughout the election. Both candidates are Russian and the
rules of the federation state that a candidate for office must either have the
nomination of his or her home country, or of a federation of which the candidate
has been a member for at least a year. Karpov, who also has the nominations
of France, Germany and Switzerland, claims that a vote
by a majority of the Russian Chess Federation on May 14 to endorse him was
legitimate and that he therefore is the Russian nominee.
After that vote, Arkady Dvorkovich, the chairman of the board of supervisors
of the federation, and a high-ranking Kremlin official, took control of the
federation and decreed that the vote was invalid. In a meeting on June 28, a
quorum of members of the federation voted to give Dvorkovich sole authority
to act on the federation’s behalf until a new meeting can be called in October
– after the FIDE elections. Dvorkovich then reaffirmed an earlier letter
he sent to FIDE in April endorsing Ilyumzhinov for president.
The lawsuit seeks to reaffirm the May 14 vote. It also seeks to show that Ilyumzhinov
has not been a member of the Argentinian and Mexican federations for long enough
to be nominated by them. The parties to the lawsuit say that the federation
has not turned over documents showing proof of his memberships, despite repeated
requests.
With regard to Marinello, who was born in Chile but has lived in the United
States for 20 years, the lawsuit claims that her nominations by Chile and Brazil
are not legitimate as she is not a member of either federation. That is not
true, Marinello said in a telephone interview. She said that she has dual citizenship
with Chile, travels there often because her family still lives there, and still
conducts chess seminars there. As for Brazil, she said that she had played chess
for a league there for many years. “My ties to Chile and Brazil are much stronger
than Karpov’s ties to France and Germany,” she said.
The election is this September at the Chess
Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia.
