I refer to my declaration regarding my provisional withdrawal from any legal, financial and business operations of FIDE made at the FIDE Presidential Board in Athens, Greece on 6 December 2015.As a victim of unfounded accusations, I was certain that I would rapidly succeed in proving my innocence. I did not suspect at the time that I would be deprived even of a possibility to effectively defend myself due to systematic violations of my due process rights. This is why I confidently declared to the Presidential Board that I would withdraw from legal, financial and business operations of FIDE until I am removed from the OFAC sanction list.
As my experience has shown, however, not only OFAC takes its decisions behind closed doors, without notice, but there is also a lack of adequate procedure in place to effectively challenge the designation. Thus, I was not entitled to any type of hearing or trial to contest my designation in the sanction list. OFAC’s accusations were supported either by mere speculations or faulty intelligence. In addition, I could not obtain access to all information necessary to defend myself as a big part of this information was “classified”.
Therefore, in disrespect of the guarantees provided by all universal and regional human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, my due process rights had been effectively violated. My case is not just one of a kind, there appear to be systematic violations, some of which were recognized by US Courts. Thus, OFAC’s designation procedure has already been found unconstitutional by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the light of the above, I have to put end to my provisional withdrawal from exercising certain powers as FIDE President. By the present notice, I am revoking my declaration of the 6th of December 2015 and, starting from today, will fully exercise my powers as the FIDE President. Whenever my listing in the OFAC’s sanction list is an obstacle for me to represent FIDE, I will delegate specific tasks to other persons.
Gens una sumus! We are one family!
President of the International Chess Federation (FIDE)
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
04.06.2017
