Wednesday, February 14, 2018

The closed circle

Quite paradoxically, Magnus Carlsen’s triumph in Fischer’s chess came the same day when the Swiss bank UBS announced the closure of FIDE’s bank account, apparently due — as treasurer Adrian M. Siegel wrote in an open letter to his associates — to the fact that FIDE President Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov is still on the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s blacklist.
It’s not yet clear, however, how much today’s announcement has to do with the “white money strategy in Switzerland”, and how much it has to do with the start of the electoral campaign for FIDE’s next presidential election.
Whatever it is, just Bobby Fischer comes to mind. Here’s how, in 2007, he announced on his web site of having been kicked out of the Swiss UBS bank: “UBS to Bobby: ‘Get out of our high-class bank right now you filthy dog you!’. Click here for the shocking UBS––Bobby Fischer file: 115 pages”.

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