English Chess Forum

As you can see from his twitter feed (just open the link and scroll down a bit), Mr Danailov has accepted the Court of Arbitration decision, with grace and dignity:

"What can I say..To win in TAS you need a very expensive Swiss law firm with connections as #FIDE did and spend min 100.000€.Must try anyways
Silvio Danailov @SilvioDanailov Of course they won't see a dime,expenses and 5000€ my arce. Enjoy your victory morons,hope is worth it. It was fun anyway:)"

No surprise

I assume that's the twitter account with 31K fake followers?

Mick Norris wrote:No surprise.

Unfortunately, this is par for the course. The CAS allows anyone to pursue the most frivolous lawsuits against FIDE, giving them latitude which no normal court would allow. The ECF Board of course blazed this trail, and perhaps were able to give Danailov some hints on how to cause maximim risk-free damage.

Eventually CAS finds that the plaintiff's case has no merit whatsoever and awards FIDE costs. They know perfectly well that these will never be paid, but that is not their concern and they declare their hands washed.

Cue complaints from the usual sources ( see above ) that FIDE is at fault for incurring high legal costs.

Where does this leave the Bulgarian Federation? It's a softer sanction than the one on Iran, as individual players are still free to compete in FIDE official tournaments and FIDE rated tournaments. What do they have to do to get back to normal FIDE membership?

NickFaulks wrote:

Mick Norris wrote:No surprise.

Unfortunately, this is par for the course. The CAS allows anyone to pursue the most frivolous lawsuits against FIDE, giving them latitude which no normal court would allow. The ECF Board of course blazed this trail, and perhaps were able to give Danailov some hints on how to cause maximim risk-free damage.

Eventually CAS finds that the plaintiff's case has no merit whatsoever and awards FIDE costs. They know perfectly well that these will never be paid, but that is not their concern and they declare their hands washed.

Cue complaints from the usual sources ( see above ) that FIDE is at fault for incurring high legal costs.

I think it's likely unfair to say the ECF Board "blazed this trail, and perhaps were able to give Danailov some hints". My impression was that they were duped into lending the ECF's name and awarding Power of Attorney to an American law firm. In particular, the Board appeared to have no idea that two cases were brought on ECF's behalf.

Angus French wrote: My impression was that they were duped

Can we agree that some of the Board were duped, and others were involved in the duping?

Angus French wrote: My impression was that they were duped into lending the ECF's name and awarding Power of Attorney to an American law firm. In particular, the Board appeared to have no idea that two cases were brought on ECF's behalf.

Board members at the time have claimed that the actions of the then President and then FIDE Delegate were with the authority of the Board as whole and not rogue actions. What is known is that reports to the ECF Council meetings "forgot" to mention not once, but twice, the ECF's involvement. The story only became public knowledge when Kirsan himself announced the action by the "British" and Georgian Federations.

NickFaulks wrote:

Angus French wrote: My impression was that they were duped

Can we agree that some of the Board were duped, and others were involved in the duping?

That's possibly true but I don't know. Certainly I felt the Board acted without circumspection.

Roger de Coverly wrote:Board members at the time have claimed that the actions of the then President and then FIDE Delegate were with the authority of the Board as whole and not rogue actions.

Accepting that at face value, what we shall never know is whether it was explained to them that the action had no legal merit, but that didn't matter because the point was to drain FIDE of funds through legal fees.

NickFaulks wrote:

Roger de Coverly wrote:Board members at the time have claimed that the actions of the then President and then FIDE Delegate were with the authority of the Board as whole and not rogue actions.

Accepting that at face value, what we shall never know is whether it was explained to them that the action had no legal merit, but that didn't matter because the point was to drain FIDE of funds through legal fees.

That was certainly not explained to us.

Roger de Coverly wrote:What is known is that reports to the ECF Council meetings "forgot" to mention not once, but twice, the ECF's involvement.

Reference to the case was also removed from the Board minutes.

Darko Polimac wrote:The CAS dismiss report at the ECU website is not complete!

Soon they will publish the full report

The CAS have now published their findings which you can read here and its a damning indictment of Danailov and the Bulgarian Chess Federation. Headlines:

The Panel concluded that ECU acted in an entirely fair, proper and transparent manner;

The Panel concluded that Bulgarian Chess Federation deliberately decided not to comply with the ECU request for documents;

The Panel did not find the President of the Bulgarian Chess Federation Mr. Silvio Danailov a truthful or reliable witness;

In the Panel’s view, Mr. Danailov’s dismissive indifference to allegations of serious financial impropriety involving the Appellant demonstrated a grave disregard for his responsibilities as the Appellant’s President;

The Panel observed that there were reasonable grounds for serious offences by the Bulgarian Chess Federation;

that the Appellant was knowingly involved in paying funds to a bank account which was falsely represented to be the Respondent’s official bank account, when in fact it was controlled by unknown persons who had nothing to do with the Respondent;

Bulgarian General Prosecutor Letter - The forgery and the sum of money involved are huge, thus this case will be treated as a heavy crime;

European Chess Union asks Bulgarian authorities to extend the investigation to the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 and to identify all the individuals involved in the case with criminal offences.

Time is almost up for the Bulgarian Chess Federation "Bulgarian Ministry of Youth & Sport has given 7 days (from 1st August) to the Bulgarian Chess Federation to reimburse the unlawfully and inappropriately spent funds in the amount of BGN 2.097.461 (approx 1 million EUR) to the bank account of the Ministry." What will they do if the BCF don't cough up I wonder?

I note from previous posts that Nick does not have a high opinion of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), I'm beginning to see why after reading this latest press release on Sakotic.