French Cheating Scandal - Feller Contests and Counter-Attack!s

Hello everybody!

Following our post "Scandal: French Chess Grandmasters Accused of Cheating" 3 days ago, and 58 comments as of now, the world is following the situation, amazed that there could be such a serious accusation, without presenting the facts. Many are accepting the accusations without asking questions.

Even the New York Times Chess Blog wrote a story about the scandal yesterday.

The issue is that, as some people in the comments to our first post have mentioned, that the players should be considered innocent, until the discipline commission, after duly verifying the facts, prove and decide otherwise. A mistake would prove very costly both to the accusing and to the accused.

We just received an email from GM Sébastien Feller himself, who made an official statement, stating that he totally contests the accusations, and that they were caused by totally different reasons such as the fact that he supported Ilyumzhinov in the FIDE election, and that he talked about accounting irregularities of the French Chess Federation. Feller says he hired a lawyer to counter-attack the French Federation. Read the official statement by Sébastien Feller below:

Here is my official answer to the French Federation :

Official Statement from Sebastien Feller :

Je conteste totalement les accusations de tricherie de la Fédération Française d' Echecs.

Cette procédure disciplinaire est en réalité liée au fait que j'ai soutenu lors des Olympiades,

l' actuel président de la FIDE en opposition avec l 'acutelle direction de la Fédération

Française des Echecs. Le président de la FIDE est d' ailleurs diffamé sur le blog de Jean-Claude Moingt, lequel prétend qu 'il a bénéficié de procurations fictives. De plus, j' ai fait état lors

de conversations privées, lesquelles ont été répétées, d' irrégularités comptables de la Fédération Française (des précisions seront données ultérieurement), lesquelles ont déclenché la colère du président. J'ai demandé à mon avocat, Me Charles Morel, d' engager une action en justice en dommages et intérêts contre la Fédération Française pour avoir de façon injustifiée cité mon nom dans un communiqué, repris sur tous les sites français et étrangers, ainsi que dans la presse internationale.

Best regards,

Sébastien Feller

Dirty. And definitely not good for chess.

Feel free to post your comments below, but please try to be fair. As far as we know, or don't know, nothing has been proven yet, and we don't know who's right. We don't want to be a chess blog with cheap anonymous negative vibes floating around. We love chess and chess players, and we ask you to do the same!

Posted on Alexandra Kosteniuk's

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