Recall that on November 25 last year, the US Treasury has included Ilyumzhinov in the sanctions list for alleged "ties with the government and the Central Bank of the Syrian Arab Republic". For his part, FIDE President reacted with surprise to this action and expressed confidence that this misunderstanding would be resolved in a short time.
According to Ilyumzhinov’s statement made at a press conference with Interfax on August 26, about 1000 people were included in the US sanctions lists at that time, but so far none of them made any attempt to challenge the decisions taken by the US Treasury. This creates certain problems, because there is no instrument to exclude from the lists those who got there by mistake or denounced by some detractors.
The FIDE President's lawyers began work on the exclusion Ilyumzhinov from the sanctions list by requesting the official documents from the US Treasury Office. As a result, they were able to obtain a copy of the administrative case, under which OFAC officials - the US Department responsible for the maintaining of sanctions lists - sanctioned Ilyumzhinov.
"In late June, I received an official letter of 40 pages. We have carefully studied it with the lawyers. My lawyers said they did not even know what to bring to court, because there was nothing but reprints of articles from the British newspaper The Guardian and interview with Garry Kasparov," said Ilyumzhinov at a press conference.
However, the imposed sanctions block financial activities of FIDE President in the United States, and that includes prevention from signing of sponsorship contracts with the US companies. Furthermore, they question the reputation of the head of the World Chess Federation.
Ilyumzhinov even tried to personally fly to the United States. The purpose of the trip was a meeting with representatives of the US Treasury and other concerned agencies, where Ilyumzhinov expected to prove the absurdity of charges against him. He has repeatedly stressed that he had never concealed and still does not hide his meetings with representatives of the Syrian leadership and business circles as well as with politicians and businessmen from other countries.
However, despite the fact that the Ilyumzhinov’s visa is still valid, the representatives of the American Delta Airlines did not allow him to board the plane without further explanation on August 25.
Meanwhile, the activities of the head of FIDE, which unites 187 countries, require visiting about 100 countries every year. These trips, their objectives and the results are widely reported in the press and on the website of the World Chess Federation. Anyone can easily see that there is nothing illegal or threatening the US interests.
Many experts believe that the only fault Ilyumzhinov is that he is a Russian citizen and is considered to be a friend of the President Vladimir Putin. With this approach, it is difficult to prove one’s case, even referring to objective facts.
"It is absolutely impossible to look for logic in the actions of the United States. The United States has long been given up both the principles of international law and the principles of common sense. They make arbitrary actions and declare them legal," said the member of the Federation Council, the former head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the State Duma Aleksey Pushkov.
Despite all this, the authors of the petition in support of Ilyumzhinov, which was put on the White House website, believe that an open and adversarial investigation by the US Supreme Court will allow correcting the injustice. The World Chess Championship will be held in New York in November and it would be, to say the least, strange to carry it out in the absence of the head of FIDE.
By the way, citizens of any country can sign this petition. As a rule, it is signed by those who believe that the US desire to impose its will on other countries is absurd and unacceptable. You can sign the petition here.