NY Times Interviews Kirsan Ilyumzhinov

Finally someone else than Yury Vasiliev got to (sort of) interview FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Dylan McClain received written answers to his query and posted them on the NY Times' Gambit Chess Blog.

Among the four categories - Grand Prix, anti-doping scandal, rating inflation and FIDE's future - my attention returned to the third paragraph on a relatively benign topic of possible introduction of new "super-title":

FIDE is very strict in punishing illegitimate actions of players who want to manipulate the rating system or falsify games in a tournament. Our Ethical Commission has had several cases in which long-term bans were accepted for punishing illegitimate actions of players or arbiters, organizers. If any change may be needed here, it should just strengthen the system which shall exclude illegitimate actions.

This is simply misleading. FIDE does not care to investigate forged tournaments, unless it is already obvious to the entire world - like that circus in Ukraine few years ago. I can name from the top of my head at least five tournaments where norms were prearranged. And FIDE was notified about those.