English Chess Forum

This has been mentioned elsewhere on this site but I thought it worth mentioning the story in more detail, not least because the Telegraph report is paywalled. The original piece is here and is in Russian: there is a brief account of the accusations on this Twitter thread.

As I said, the initial Meduza report is in Russian and it's also long, which means it takes quite a long time to work through using Google Translate (which is not necessarily at its best translating Russian to English). I have managed to work through it and other people who want to have a clear idea of what this really quite important affair is about may want to do so too if and when they have time.

There is an article by Peter Doggers at https://www.chess.com/news/view/vulgar- ... ess-meduza.

That article does not name the alleged offender, but it took me less than five minutes to identify him from the information in the article. I subsequently saw that he had been named in the Telegraph report.

Both the Doggers article and the Twitter comment to which Justin linked say that the alleged offender is also suspected of having cheated to gain his IM title.

Can I recommend that if we discuss that last matter it does not dominate the discussion

"Can I recommend that if we discuss that last matter it does not dominate the discussion"

Agreed - but that complaint (if upheld) may be dealt with more quickly and lead to at least some sanctions. Obviously, the other matter is much more serious. The other matter (even if anyone wants to investigate it) would require that someone kept the evidence instead of (understandably) destroying it as soon as possible.

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 10, 2022 10:35 pm

Agreed - but that complaint (if upheld) may be dealt with more quickly and lead to at least some sanctions.

Sorry, no chance. Nothing could be proved at the time, so certainly can't be now.

The good news is that the regulations have been changed in response and such a TA would now fall at several separate hurdles.

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 10, 2022 10:35 pm

The other matter (even if anyone wants to investigate it) would require that someone kept the evidence instead of (understandably) destroying it as soon as possible.

Meduza seem to have seen quite a lot of it