FIDE Responds To London Withdrawal

A few days ago the organisers of the London bid for the 2012 World Chess Championship withdrew their offer to host the event, as reported here.

FIDE has now responded with an open letter claiming that the real reason that the London bid was withdrawn was that the sponsor lost interest when Magnus Carlsen withdrew.

Open letter of Mr. Israel Gelfer concerning the FWCM 2012

Dear Malcolm,

I received the announcement of Chess Promotions that you are withdrawing your offer to organize the FIDE World Championship match (FWCM) with great disappointment. I would like to provide the chess world with the correct facts which caused this move.

On February 2010 FIDE granted you the option to organize the FWCM "under the same conditions like the Sofia match between Anand and Topalov". On 15 February you signed a memorandum accepting the conditions and regulations of the match and two days later paid a deposit of 50,000 Euro for such option.

After that, for a long period, you have been proposing several changes from the Sofia contract. In July 2010 (after the original deadline was extended by FIDE) you sent to FIDE a different version of the contract with different conditions. For most (sic) among this were important financial conditions which had to be clarified first. In a constructive manner FIDE, wishing to hold the match in London, accepted several conditions interalia reducing the prize fund by 20% due to UK taxes not covered by the organisers, reduction of the contribution to FIDE, reduction of the number of principals. In January we met in London when I proposed to discuss the agreement based on the Sofia contract as amended above.

In our meeting both you and Mr. Andrew Finan replied that you only consider the version dictated by you, claiming that they are no substantial differences between the two contracts. You made it very clear, as you recall, that the sponsor of the match "lost interest" in it after the withdrawl (sic) of GM Magnus Carlsen and consequently instructed you "not to negotiate at all about anything" i.e. "take it or leave it".

Even after the meeting in London I was trying to solve the problems and I informed FIDE about the situation. The FIDE Secretariat then gave me a list of 36 differences between our version and your proposed contract and 16 changes from your original July draft. Many of which were completely unacceptable to FIDE, interalia FIDE being responsible of player’s taxes in their respective jurisdictions, no liability for any cancellation for any reason and putting FIDE as responsible for several obligations which were and are not in FIDE`s hands.

Moreover, in your contract you change the regulations of the match. Furthermore you have informed us only on 27 January that the players may be liable up to 50% tax. This means that the net prize fund could be as little as near 1.2 million EUR after tax where as our agreement was that you will provide, as in Sofia, a prize fund of 2.0 million EUR after tax. Therefore your statement that the conditions were equal to Sofia was incorrect.

In order to try and solve the problems I asked for an extension of the signing date until the Presidential Bord meeting in early February. You were also invited by the FIDE President to come to Antalya so that we could try to reach an agreement. Unfortunately this proposal was rejected and you announced the withdrawl (sic) of your offer.

It is clear, and was obvious to me and expressed specifically by you, that the withdrawl (sic) of GM Carlsen from the WC cycle meant that the sponsor was no longer interested in sponsoring the match.

I regret that the FIDE World Championship Match, despite all our efforts, will not be organized in London in 2012.

Best regards,
Israel Gelfer
FIDE Vice President

If I understand that right, then FIDE is complaining that 1) the London team bidding to host the event had the temerity to try to negotiate a good deal, and 2) they only withdrew because Carlsen pulled out of the qualification process. Which seems odd because there is no guarantee that Carlsen would have won the Candidates and qualified for the match against Anand anyway.

Ah well, I'm sure more open letters will follow to make it all clear...