Disclaimer: As a matter of fairness, I will publish articles, letters, and information from both parties when I receive them.

13th of August 2010

In relation to the Chess Federation of Cyprus and all the stories going around I want to clarify irrevocably the whole situation.

On the 14th of July Mr Karpov visited Cyprus. During his stay he visited the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Mr Demetris Christofias. The day after his visit there was an article in Mr. Karpov’s website that “President Christofias supports Karpov’’….

I immediately contacted personally the office of the President of the Republic of Cyprus and asked them if that was true and showed them the copies of the article.

The answer was that the President of Cyprus has never offered any support or promised anything else to Mr. Karpov but he just accepted to meet him for a coffee as the ex-world chess champion.

President’s Christofias office said to me that they would send a letter to Mr Karpov in order to remove this story from their site “Karpov 2010” as it is not true.

The other mystery concerning Mr Karpov’s visit to Cyprus is that he believed that our delegate for the elections was Mr Vassilis Aristotelous, a member of the Board of the Cyprus chess Federation, and for this reason he spent all his time with him…. He made him a great fun and loyal to him acting as his employee in Cyprus????

Mr Aristotelous Vassilis acting as an employee of Mr Karpov visited all the members of the Federation in order to take their written consent for supporting Karpov. He also promised them that the document with their signature will not be shown to the public… He managed to take ten signatures, with just nine of them being from members of the Cyprus Chess federation. One signature was from somebody who is not a member of Cyprus Chess Federation. At a later stage, two out of the nine members that have showed support for Mr. Karpov, changed their mind.

Anyhow that letter has no legal status for our Federation and it is just a planter for the eyes of those who read it and can be used only for propaganda purposes in order to divide our Federation in two pieces.

Mr Karpov, his partners and Mr Vassilis Aristotelous efforts to divide the Cyprus Chess Federation haven’t been achieved as they have underestimated the President of the Cyprus Chess Federation.

Myself as the President of the Federation had no idea concerning Mr Karpov’s visit to Cyprus as he had never contacted me or even spent a minute to call me, as his only concern at the time was about the person that would travel to Siberia to Vote and he thought that the delegate was Mr. Vassilis Aristotelous.

In order to cut the long story short, according to the legal status of our Federation the President of the Cyprus Chess Federation is the only person that is the delegate for the elections and does not need any approval from anybody in order to vote whatever he wishes.

But myself as the President of the Cyprus Federation in order to have unity in our federation I
have asked for the eighteen members’ opinion.

In the beginning twelve members supported Mr. Kirsans’ ticket and six supported Mr. Karpovs’ ticket. Then suddenly 3 members changed their mind as they had received a telephone call from a Private number saying to them that it was Mr Kasparov on the phone, promising them a lot of things that never happened and divided our federation in two pieces, nine with Mr. Kirsan ticket and nine with Mr Karpov ticket.

After a legal written demand from Mr Vassilis Aristotelous and eight other members of the Cyprus chess federation I called a legal Board meeting of the Cyprus Chess Federation members on the 19th of July 2010 in order to hear their opinion for the upcoming elections.

In that meeting only nine out of the eighteen members were present which is more than enough to have a proper and legal meeting and decision according to the legal status of our Federation.

In the above mentioned meeting a Unanimous decision was obtained to support the ticket of Mr. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov for the upcoming FIDE elections.

This is the only legal and correct decision for the Cyprus vote in the upcoming FIDE elections in Khanty-Mansiysk.

Any other publications or letters, articles from any site or directions, etc concerning our Vote to the September FIDE elections is just propaganda without any legal status.

Christoforos Tornaritis
President
Cyprus Chess Federation

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