We have another anniversary. Exactly three years from the day, the US Treasury subjected Kirsan Ilyumzhinov to sanctions. Of course, we cannot celebrate such “holiday”, but we should remember how it happened. Ilyumzhinov, as we know, became the only Russian citizen who actively rebelled against such a decision and publicly declared that this was a provocation. We have to note that, despite the demands of Ilyumzhinov and his lawyers to provide at least some evidence of his guilt, OFAC still remains silent. They just sent him some old newspaper clippings and that was it.Looking through the web pages in search of information about a memorable event that occurred on 25 November 2015, we stumbled onto Chess.News. Read it and remember how it happened.
“It has just become known that FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is on the list of sanctioned persons and entities. The United States Treasury informs about the imposition of sanctions against four Russian citizens and six Russian legal entities because of Syria. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is one of them.
“Ilyumzhinov is a wealthy Russian businessman, former president of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, and long-time World Chess Federation president,” the US Treasury reported.
Ilyumzhinov is charged with "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 ".
Chess.News also cites a comment from Kirsan Ilyumzhinov:
“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. "In general, of course this is unexpected, I'm a bit surprised".
Literally, the previous day, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his tenure as head of FIDE. The press secretary for the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, sent a congratulatory telegram to him.
