Thursday, 26.11.2015 05:04
The US Department of the Treasury has added Kirsan Ilyumzhinov to its list
of sanctioned persons and entities. The FIDE President is now treated by
the US government as a specially designated person which means that his
US assets, if any, are now blocked and the US citizens are generally forbidden
to deal with him.
Among the new entries in the list, one can see also Russian Financial Alliance
Bank in which Ilyumzhinov has a 19% share. The bank has been operating at
the Russian financial market since 1992 and is rated #643 in the Russian
Federation banking system, according to the size of its assets, informs
allbanks.ru. One of the major shareholders of the bank (19.75%), Mudalal
Mtanyus Khuri, can be found in the same list of persons and entities sanctioned
by the US.
According to this report, the essence of the accusations is that Ilyumzhinov
is involved in "materially assisting and acting for or on behalf of
the Government of Syria, Central Bank of Syria, Adib Mayaleh, and Batoul
Rida". The latter two persons had been sanctioned by the US earlier.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov himself has already commented on the situation: "I
think this is a provocation. On Sunday, just in a few days, I have a scheduled
visit to the USA to negotiate and sign the agreement on the World Championship
match that will take place in New York in November 2016. It is yet to be
sorted out why they added me in that list. I will go to the Treasury to
ask them what's wrong and what questions they've got to me", the FIDE
President told Russia 24 TV channel, as quoted by rsport.ru. "In general,
of course this is unexpected, I'm a bit surprised".
Only two days ago, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has celebrated the 20th anniversary
of his FIDE presidency, while earlier, in his interview to Chess-News, he
had stated that the next World Championship match would certainly take place
in the USA in October 2016.
Source: Chess-News
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov had promised to be in the US on Sunday, but instead
he appeared in one of the TV programs aired on the Russian channel Dozhd.
Let us remind you that several days ago the US Department of the Treasury
added the reigning FIDE president to the list of sanctioned officials.
"I don't sell any ISIL oil to Syria, Ilyumzhinov assured. Also, I
am not having any connections with any of the organisations of banks mentioned
in the accusations published by the US. Perhaps they didn't like that I've
visited the place several times recently. That's true, we've been supplying
Syria. So what? Last time we supplied them with a thousand chess sets and
three thousand chess books for children. [...] Last time I was there –
it was two years ago – Bashar Al-Assad and I had to open a new chess
center, but because of the terror attack threat he couldn't take part in
this event. We opened chess clubs in Aleppo and Damascus. By the way, the
terrorists have already destroyed by bombing the club we had opened in Aleppo."
Excerpts from the interview
Ksenia Sobchak; Did you really have only chess interests
in Syria?
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov: Nothing at all. Neither companies
nor businesses – nothing. My visits were related only to chess.
Wouldn't you agree it could be hard to believe for
any government, and especially for the US government, that chess is the
only thing connecting you to Syria and Al-Assad?
Not only. I was in the US literally two weeks ago, so if the ministry had
any questions they could ask me. We're going to have the World Championship
there next year and now we are deciding which city would host it –
New York city, Los Angeles or San Francisco.
Pavel Lobkov: How are you going
to talk to your partners in these circumstances? Via Skype?
Well, I am going to visit the US next week. Besides the aforementioned
cities, I've asked my assistant to add Washington D.C. to my schedule, because
I would like to be received by the Department of the Treasury.
[Ilyumzhinov also commented on the recent tensions between Russia and Turkey.
He mentioned that he has a company in Turkey which is called Kirsan-Ankara.]
We created it several years ago in Ankara, in Istanbul. The company provides
consultations in communications and real estate. Through this company, I
got to know the owners of the Renaissance and other Turkish companies actively
operating on the Russian market. Russia's sanctions will of course seriously
affect our relations. We are talking about the turnovers in billions of
dollars.
Source: Chess-News
See also our previous article:
US
Sanctions against FIDE President
11/26/2015 – It comes at a bad time: on the eve of a visit to the
USA, to negotiate the venue of the 2016 World Chess Championship (Los Angeles,
San Francisco or New York), FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has been hit
by sanctions of the US Treasury. This is mainly because of dealings with
Syria and it President Assad. Currently US citizens are generally prohibited
from engaging in transactions with him.
