Friday, April 11, 2014

Jail time

Meanwhile, back at chess politics, poisonous though they be - what is the truth about Silvio Danailov and the prison term he's alleged to have served?

Readers will recall Andrew Paulson's remarkable statement written to justify his campaign for the seupty Presidency of the European Chess Union. It was notable for a series of attacks, of varying degrees of reasonableness, on Nigel Short and a similar series of defences, of varying degrees of unreasonableness, of Zurab Azmaiparashvili. But it also included two serious and important allegations against Silvio Danailov.


If these did not stand out to everybody, this is in part down to Paulson himself, who neither knows a good allegation from a bad one*, nor is a particular master of the art of précis. Nevertheless, they caught other eyes than mine and not long afterwards an interview appeared on Chessdom repeating the allegations.

The interview, a very interesting one too, went through the second of these allegations, the alleged soliciting of a bribe, in some detail, right down to the cuisine in the restaurant on a corner of the Plaza de España in Madrid where Danailov and Paulson had a meeting. (I am familiar with the Plaza de España, but not, alas, the restaurant.) We awaited more information about the first allegation, the prison sentence.

Since then, however, there has been only silence on the matter. Which is particularly odd, since the Chessdom piece was titled "Part 1" and more was promised shortly.


Following weeks? We've had six of them so far.

This is weird, for more reasons than one.

One is, naturally, that you would not normally advertise "Part 1" of an interview and claim that there would be more in the following weeks, unless you were proposing to run at least a "Part 2" in the weeks following.

Another is that there has been, as far as I am aware, no mention of this story in any other part of the chess press. Which ought to be weird, if you try to imagine an election campaign taking place, anywhere, in which a candidate was the subject of such allegations and the media made no mention of it.

You'd assume, I suspect, that the media were owned or controlled by the candidate concerned, or their party or faction. Yet such is not the case. It is just that this is chess, and the chess media do not do their job.

What's odder still is that the chess media do, in fact, report on events in chess politics. Just in recent weeks we have had Nigel Short's long article in New In Chess about Andrew Paulson: and Malcolm Pein's long editorial in CHESS about the same individual. And quite right too. It doesn't matter whether anybody likes, dislikes, agrees or disagrees with the content of either of those pieces: they're both proper pieces about important issues which are worthy of our comment and attention.

But the same is true of the Danailov allegations, isn't it?

There is an old epigram of Humbert Wolfe's:
You cannot hope to bribe or twist
Thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.
In chess it's more a question of what the man won't do. But other than that, the principle is the same.

This degrades the value of the pieces these magazines do run, since you can see that they are running them for purely factional reasons. It doesn't destroy their vaue, but it does degrade them. And if we're to look at Paulson on Danailov and say well, that's just ammunition in a rather dirty election campaign, then we must surely say the same of Short, or Pein, on Paulson. Musn't we?

Meanwhile, what of Paulson on Danailov? I contacted Chessdom to ask them about it. They replied that they'd been hoping to balance it with Danailov's point of view, but that he was avoiding all questions.

As he is entitled to do, without our drawing adverse conclusions. But it's not a reason for ceasing to pursue the matter.

I'd like to see Part 2 of that interview. I'd like to see other parts of the chess media follow the story. And I'd most of all like to know. Did Danailov solicit a bribe for access to the office of the Mayor of Madrid? Has he done time in prison for theft of military equipment, or anything else?

I don't even necessarily care if he has. Better men than either of us have gone to prison. But it's not exactly irrelevant. Especially not from a man who compares himself to Gandhi. And it shouldn't be hidden with the help of chess publications which will complain all day about ethical violations on the part of Kirsan and his camp but have nothing to say when it's the friends of Garry Kasparov who stand accused.

[* It also doesn't seem to occur to Paulson that the bribery allegation reflects every bit as badly on him as it does on his opponent.]

[Andrew Paulson index]

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

My guess would be that the non-appearance of chessdom part 2 goes back to a semi-secret clause in the Paulson resignation agreement, being that parties would refrain from comments or personal attacks on the candidates for the ECU election.

As regards whether the magazines are one-sided in their attacks, empirical observation suggests that anyone involved in FIDE gets tainted in some form or other, not least because of the bribe friendly nature of its voting processes and the implicit condoning of such practices by both the current and previous FIDE Presidents.

RdC

ejh said...

My guess would be that the non-appearance of chessdom part 2 goes back to a semi-secret clause in the Paulson resignation agreement, being that parties would refrain from comments or personal attacks on the candidates for the ECU election.

That strikes me as very possible, but unless somebody is prepared to say that I see no reason to assume it. (And of course as far as I'm concerned, it's neither here nor there. This is an issue, not a card in Andrew Paulson's pack.)

anyone involved in FIDE gets tainted in some form or other

Until they start working for Kasparov, when magically....

Anonymous said...

Surely someone in Bulgaria would know if Danailov did porridge or not. If he did, I hope he wasn't sharing a cell with a man named Bubba.

Anonymous said...

If he had done jail time, g**gle would know. It hasn't a clue.

Anonymous said...


Until they start working for Kasparov, when magically....

If you denigrate anyone with the courage or money to stand against Kirsan, you are supporting his continued life presidency.

RdC

ejh said...

That's bullshit, Roger. Everybody who runs for office should be properly scrutinised. You're not entitled to a free pass because of who you're running against.

That's simple and elementary and everybody understands it.

If he had done jail time, g**gle would know

No it wouldn't.

ejh said...

Incidentally, as far as I can see it takes no courage whatsoever to run againt Kirsan. It does, however, take several shedloads of money.

Anonymous said...

I seem to recall that no-one was prepared to run against Kirsan in 1998. You do remember that the FIDE Congress was in his own statelet. In 2002, there wasn't an election either. A ticket of Leong and Sand was intending to stand until Kirsan made them an offer. Whether it was one they couldn't refuse isn't known. Thirteen years later, they defected.

In the context of no elections since 1996, it was a novelty that Bessel Kok attempted to establish how much opposition there was to the continued Kirsan life presidency. The supposed story is that Kirsan or the FIDE establishment put up enough incentives and perhaps money to ensure Kirsan's re-election.

RdC

ejh said...

Whether it was one they couldn't refuse isn't known

What's your suggestion here?

Anonymous said...


What's your suggestion here?

Reports of the only previous election in 1996 talk of threats being made to some of the participants if they didn't deliver votes, particularly proxy votes to the right quarter.

From the USCF archive
http://archive.uschess.org/news/archives/fide/yerva-09.html

and within that
On the second day of General Assembly we got knowledge, that the employee of FIDE Ignatius Leong from Singapore, who had several proxies and used them not for the reelection of the President but for Kouatly, was taken by three bodyguards to the FIDE-office, where he had to sign the proxies to delegates in favor of Iljumzhinov, and was fired.

ejh said...

That's an interesting story, but as it stands there's not a lot to back it up, is there? (For instance - where's the letter been for the past eighteen years?) It doesn't really strike me as plausible that Leong has spent aeons supporting Kirsan because he's living in fear.

One observation that might be worth making is that in the current campaigns there's a lot of talk about what other people have said to other people (Paulson said x to Ray Keene, somebody said y to Nigel Freeman). This is all very jolly as tittle-tattle, but useless as evidence of anything unless x and y are put to the people who are supposed to have said them.

Anonymous said...

That's an interesting story, but as it stands there's not a lot to back it up, is there?

It's a contemporary report which was archived by the USCF. It's not new, I recall reading about the incidents mentioned back in 1996, either through TWIC or directly on line. It's even possible that the printed magazines of the period covered the story, enthusiastic as they were to cover anything bad about Kirsan. Those who recall the period may even remember that there was a call for the English team and others to boycott the 1998 Olympiad, not so much as a protest against Kirsan as FIDE President, but as a protest against Kirsan as Kalmykia President and the internal policies he was alleged to be pursuing.

Kirsan doesn't really like elections very much, he would prefer his opponents to withdraw before it comes to a vote.

RdC

ejh said...

It's not new

Yeah I gathered. That's why I was wondering what happened to this letter Leong wrote.

I don't think many people would consider Leong a wwitness of truth. This of course doesn't mean he can't be telling the truth on any specific occasion, a principle applicable to other individuals besides himself (and quite an important one in the present situation).

there was a call for the English team and others to boycott the 1998 Olympiad

I can recall some fuss a bit later than that - I remember listening to a Radio Four programme which may have featured Sarah Hurst and Jon Speelman. That would be late 1999 or very early 2000, though.

Kirsan doesn't really like elections very much

There's a few people around English chess who don't like election results very much, either...