The 2016 World Chess Championship, A Russian Spy, and The Mueller Report
It’s time to revisit the 2016 World Championship and uncover how it got entangled with the American presidential election, a possible Russian spy, and the Mueller Report.
FIDE’s role in Russian politics is ever more relevant after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the continued Russian FIDE Reign, so I have dug into the internet archives to find and present relevant sources and stories about the 2016 World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin.
The match took place in New York at the Fulton Market Building from 10.-30. November, and started only two days after Trump won over Hillary Clinton in the election. Karjakin has long been known to be a heavy Putin supporter and there were high hopes for a victory. Dmitry Peskov, Putin's Press Secretary and Chairman of RCF Board of Trustees, said during the match:
“Many people follow this match. The entire country is rotting for Karjakin, including the President. Naturally, we keep him updated on the course of the match”.1
However, most chess fans might just remember the match by how it ended. The move Qh6+!!
But recently new details have been unearthed about the Russian efforts to exert influence during and after the election victory. On March 8. 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office issued a statement with the following allegation:
Dual U.S. / Russian National Charged With Acting Illegally As A Russian Agent In The United States
Elena Branson Allegedly Willfully Evaded FARA Registration for Nearly a Decade, Working to Advance the Interests of the Russian Government While Receiving Tasking and Funding from High-Level Russian Officials2
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Michael J. Driscoll is quoted in the statement: “As alleged, Branson worked as an illegal agent of the Russian government in circumvention of FARA requirements. At the direction of the Russian government, she led a years long campaign to identify the next generation of American leaders, cultivate information channels, and shape US policy in favor of Russian objectives. This case highlights the breadth of Russia's relentless intelligence and malign influence activities targeting the United States. The FBI will continue to be just as aggressive in uncovering and dismantling these Russian government networks who seek to harm our national security.”3
In the attached court documents4 it is shown that Branson was involved in correspondence involving former FIDE-president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in an effort to try to get the then-president-elect Donald Trump to visit the World Chess Championship only two days after the election victory.
The former FIDE president couldn't attend the World Championship Match in New York due to sanctions issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control in 2015. The sanctions were enforced in 2015 due to “materially assisting and acting for or on behalf of the Government of Syria, Central Bank of Syria, Adib Mayaleh, and Batoul Rida.”5
If you want an in-depth overview of the Kirsan FIDE reign I can highly recommend reading the article “Russia Made The King Of Chess. The U.S. Dethroned Him.” from fivethirtyeight.com, where the following quote is from:
“In 2003, Ilyumzhinov flew to Iraq, less than two days before the start of the U.S. invasion, where he reportedly met with Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday. In 2011, he flew to Libya, amid an ongoing NATO bombing campaign, where he played a chess match against Moammar Gadhafi. And in 2012, he flew to Syria, shortly after the outbreak of civil war, where he met with Bashar Assad to, in Ilyumzhinov’s telling, deliver chess textbooks to Syrian schoolchildren.
At times, he appeared to be doing much more than promoting chess. Over the years, Ilyumzhinov has repeatedly been alleged to act as an informal envoy for the Russian government.
His son David confirmed that Ilyumzhinov served a unique role. “It’s not a secret,” David told us. “He can go like he is just there for chess, for the chess tournament, but he can deliver a message. And the message won’t get screwed up.”
The time and place for the World Chess Championship collided with the American presidential elections.
It was later shown that Putin ‘ordered’ an effort to undermine faith in the U.S. election and help Trump.6 The Trump organization was also examined after the election for collusion with the Russians. The Mueller report published the results of the investigation, officially titled Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.
The Mueller report showed interest in the gathering of key people during the World Championship. It also showed that Kirsan had tried to organize the match in Trump Tower already in March 2016.
So what happened during the World Championship Match? And was there a reason for Mueller to take notice of the event?
Magnus Carlsen himself started the first game by playing the Trompowsky, which might have been a reference to the then President-elect. Carlsen said to Norwegian television that he was “a huge fan of Trump.”7 To what degree Carlsen was serious is a bit uncertain.
During the match, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov and Trump transition team member and tech billionaire, Peter Thiel, also were present.
Peskov is still in office as a press officer in Kremlin. On tie between the Trump administration and Kremlin was an email sent in January 2016, from Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to Dmitry Peskov asking for help with a business deal in Moscow.8
The New York Times reported from the opening of the Match, where Peskov was spotted:
Near the bar, Dmitry Peskov, a press secretary to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, spoke on his cellphone, then walked toward the door, stopping every few feet to greet another familiar face.9
Peter Thiel has been described as a controversial figure in the tech world. Here is a quote from a Guardian article from 11. November 2016:
Thiel delivered a keynote address at the Republican national convention in July and donated $1.25m to support Trump’s campaign.
“I build companies and I’m supporting people who are building new things, from social networks to rocket ships,” he said at the convention. “I’m not a politician. But neither is Donald Trump. He is a builder, and it’s time to rebuild America.”10
Another prominent figure present at the World Championship was Russian Billionaire Yuri Milner, who organized a celebration party11 for Magnus after the victory. On a side note it is worth mentioning that he just recently, in January 2022, invested $10M dollars into the Play Magnus Group through his foundation Breakthrough Initiatives Limited.
An interesting connection is that Yuri Milner and Peter Thiel both also were invested in the real estate company Cadre. Cadre’s co-founder and part-owner of Cadre are Jared Kushner, who served in the White House as a senior advisor to his father-in-law, Donald Trump. Kushner later failed to disclose his stake in Cadre when he joined the White House administration.12
If you want to continue down the rabbit hole I can recommend reading this article from the NY Times:
The article goes into detail about how the ‘Paradise Papers’ helped show how money from Gazprom and the now sanctioned Russian bank VTB was directed into Yuri Milner’s investment company DST Global and into investments in Twitter and Facebook. Garry Kasparov was early in recognizing the Russian use of influence.
Fivethirtyeight.com had the following reportage from the World Championship VIP lounge:
Like a Russian nesting doll, a VVIP section had been set up for Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire, and company within the VIP section. It was newly roped off and closely monitored by scary-looking bodyguards. Thiel, a Donald Trump supporter and a strong chess player himself, and Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire venture capitalist, sat at a board inside. With apologies to Beyoncé, it was $6 billion at a chess table. Accompanying them: Bennett Miller, who directed “Foxcatcher,” about the wrestling-obsessed murderer and multimillionaire heir to the du Pont fortune, and the Icelandic grandmaster Hedinn Steingrimsson, who was giving them a private analysis of the ongoing championship game taking place just a few yards away.13
Another key Moscow figure who according to the Mueller report flew to New York to attend the World Championship was Kirill Dmitriev. Dmitriev is CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). The Mueller report states the following:
Post-2016 Election.
Immediately after the November 8 election, Russian government officials and prominent Russian businessmen began trying to make inroads into the new administration. The most senior levels of the Russian government encouraged these efforts. The Russian Embassy made contact hours after the election to congratulate the President-Elect and to arrange a call with President Putin. Several Russian businessmen picked up the effort from there. Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive officer of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, was among the Russians who tried to make contact with the incoming administration. In early December, a business associate steered Dmitriev to Erik Prince, a supporter of the Trump Campaign and an associate of senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Dmitriev and Prince later met face-to-face in January 2017 in the Seychelles and discussed U.S.-Russia relations. During the same period, another business associate introduced Dmitriev to a friend of Jared Kushner who had not served on the Campaign or the Transition Team. Dmitriev and Kushner’s friend collaborated on a short written reconciliation plan for the United States and Russia, which Dmitriev implied had been cleared through Putin. The friend gave that proposal to Kushner before the inauguration, and Kushner later gave copies to Bannon and incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.14
This concludes what I have gathered about the Russian presence at the World Championship match in 2016. Even though these stories and facts have been reported before, I hope that the collection as a whole will contribute to our understanding of the events that took place back in 2016.
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/Martin
Ibid.