FIDE Ethics Commission dealings (Case 2/12)

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Lukas Cimotti has posted the FIDE complaint (erroneously called "FIFE" in the thread title) of Rajilch, as "co-signed" by Riis, Whittington, and Schröder, though the PDF has "Nelson Hernandez" as the author. As can be expected, the "useful" (to Rybka) part of the EC ruling has been quoted by Schröder and others in that thread, particularly that the ICGA was sanctioned with a warning and invited to modify their statutes in accordance with FIDE principles and rules. As I had guessed, both sides will declare victory (Levy is preparing a blurb for the ICGA Journal I think). Perhaps one might compare the above linked complaint (which was later amended I think) with what was actually accepted as admissible by the EC in the end. Section 2 [ICGA Imposition of Lifetime Ban] and possibly the attendant 4.1 seem the most relevant.

The last I had heard, the EC policy (on all cases) was to ask that a measure of confidentiality still be maintained on the basis that a copy of the judgment be distributed only to parties with an interest in the matter and not generally, though if a need exists to publicize a particular judgment more widely, the permission of the Ethics Commission may be obtained. I'm not quite sure how I ended up with a copy really, I think I was put on Levy's CC list back in 2013 when he received the original EC email -- with it being unclear what the complaint was, I was asked to be some sort of "technical advisor" if this was needed (which it was not in the end). It was, however, a bit funny to be CC'd on some things where internal FIDE emails were copied, and the rather derogatory way they referred to the "Robot Tournament"... Anyway, if Banned For Life (Alan Sassler) has seen the Judgement I would guess that "parties with an interest" is sufficiently broad to include just about anyone, and of course the EC has no power to enforce its policy in any event, so one should certainly expect the whole judgement to be leaked when it is sufficiently convenient (cf. private Panel discussions, etc.).

The "matter of public record" part of the the Judgement is the following:

The EC unanimously rules that:
- The EC has competence on the complaint submitted by Mr Rajlich against the ICGA, a FIDE affiliated organisation, for an alleged violation of FIDE Code of Ethics, but has no appeal competence on the decisions of the ICGA.
- By carrying out proceedings against Mr Rajlich for an alleged violation of ICGA tournament rules and by deciding to disqualify Mr Rajlich from the World Computer Chess Championships 2006/2010, the ICGA has not violated the FIDE Code of Ethics, nor any other FIDE rule or general principle of law.
- Otherwise, by imposing a lifetime ban as a sanction against Mr Rajlich, in absence of a clear statutory basis and without sufficient procedural guarantees for Mr Rajlich, the ICGA did not act in accordance with FIDE rules, this way violating par. 2.2 and 2.2.10 of the FIDE Code of Ethics.
- ICGA has to be sanctioned with a warning and has to be invited to modify their statutes in accordance with FIDE principles and rules.
- A written motivation of the decision will be communicated to the parties by the FIDE Secretariat.

[hyatt]

Mark:

You might not have gotten a copy of the email from David, but I specifically asked him to ask the Chairman of the EC if the decision was public and could be discussed. His response to david was that the decision CAN be discussed, and parts quoted, but they wanted to leave anything related to their "reasoning" behind the decision as private until the entire report becomes public. So obviously they don't want the entire report circulated, although at seems this has been roundly abused on the Rybka Forum already...

BTW you mentioned the panel recommending the ban. We didn't. Here is the relevant paragraph from the final report:

Suitable punishment is:
● to strip Rajlich of all ICGA Tournament Titles and,
● force the return of trophies and prize funds to the ICGA and,
● ban his programs from future competitions until he can satisfy the ICGA that they
are no longer derivatives and that he has satisfied the conditions of any other
penalties the ICGA imposes.
● encourage other tournaments (Leiden, Paderborn, CCT, TACCL, etc.) to disallow
the entry of Rybka until it is proven “clean”.

The lifetime ban caught us (the secretariat) by surprise, since it was never mentioned, other than in the "until he can satisfy..." suggestion.

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My understanding is that the EC is not going to publish the full judgement themselves, unless someone asks. They have had different policies over the years, but by and large [for small cases in particular] there is no publicity other than the Conclusion listed in a Report made to the Presidential Board (or General Assembly). I emailed Levy that (due to the Rybka Forum shenanigans, selectively quoting, etc.), that he should consider petitioning the EC to make the full judgement public at some point, but he figured (at least) to wait until after Leiden on this.

What I had suggested was that the Panel recommendation, of banning until conditions are met, was a reasonable course for the ICGA to now adopt. Given that Rajlich does not seem interested in competing, and indeed I doubt he is currently even an ICGA member, I can't see that there is any reason to go beyond that.

I too was quite surprised when the lifetime ban came out, but my interpretation was always that it was "lifetime" until Rajlich addressed the issue to the ICGA's satisfaction, and then if he really wanted to compete again [as opposed to svengali-driven requests for rehearings], with a demonstratively "clean" entry, then after something like an apology as in the List/ElChinito cases (and of course returning trophies and prize monies), this would be allowed.

[BB+]

OK, since someone somewhere asked about previous sanctions, I tracked down ICCA Journal 12/4, page 233-234 on the Langer case.

2. Decisions of the ICCA Board.
During the ACM tournament in Reno, Nevada, USA, the Board of the ICCA met to discuss the matter of Mr. Langer's copying of the Mephisto Almeria program and entering it in the WMCCC in Portoroz. The ICCA Board deplored Mr. Langer's behavior, passed a vote of censure against him, and banned him from participating in an ICCA sanctioned event for a period of 12 months (to include the 1990 WMCCC). Furthermore it was decided that for the next 5 years if Mr. Langer wishes to enter any ICCA sanctioned events he must first establish clearly, by providing source code listings and any other information which is requested, that his entry was in fact written by him.

The easiest source for Reul (in Nov 2003) was the ICGA decision as published on ChessBase.

By 14:00 today no reply had been received from Mr Reul and the Tournament Committee therefore met to decide what action to recommend to the ICGA. It was decided that the program LIST should be disqualified and that Mr Reul should be banned from participation in any event organised or sanctioned by the ICGA until June 1st 2006. These recommendations are in line with previous ICCA rulings.

The ICGA agreed with these recommendations. As a result the program LIST is hereby disqualified from the tournament with immediate effect and Mr Reul is banned from participating in any events organised or sanctioned by the ICGA until June 1st 2006.

Note that it was the tournament committee that made the recommendation regarding sanctions (not just disqualification), and that said recommendations are claimed to be in line with previous ICCA rulings. As is well-known (ICGA Journal 28/1), Reul was rehabilitated in early 2005 following an apology.

[terrapene]

Lukas Cimotti has posted the FIDE complaint (erroneously called "FIFE" in the thread title) of Rajilch, as "co-signed" by Riis, Whittington, and Schröder, though the PDF has "Nelson Hernandez" as the author. As can be expected, the "useful" (to Rybka) part of the EC ruling has been quoted by Schröder and others in that thread, particularly that the ICGA was sanctioned with a warning and invited to modify their statutes in accordance with FIDE principles and rules. As I had guessed, both sides will declare victory (Levy is preparing a blurb for the ICGA Journal I think). Perhaps one might compare the above linked complaint (which was later amended I think) with what was actually accepted as admissible by the EC in the end. Section 2 [ICGA Imposition of Lifetime Ban] and possibly the attendant 4.1 seem the most relevant.

The last I had heard, the EC policy (on all cases) was to ask that a measure of confidentiality still be maintained on the basis that a copy of the judgment be distributed only to parties with an interest in the matter and not generally, though if a need exists to publicize a particular judgment more widely, the permission of the Ethics Commission may be obtained. I'm not quite sure how I ended up with a copy really, I think I was put on Levy's CC list back in 2013 when he received the original EC email -- with it being unclear what the complaint was, I was asked to be some sort of "technical advisor" if this was needed (which it was not in the end). It was, however, a bit funny to be CC'd on some things where internal FIDE emails were copied, and the rather derogatory way they referred to the "Robot Tournament"... Anyway, if Banned For Life (Alan Sassler) has seen the Judgement I would guess that "parties with an interest" is sufficiently broad to include just about anyone, and of course the EC has no power to enforce its policy in any event, so one should certainly expect the whole judgement to be leaked when it is sufficiently convenient (cf. private Panel discussions, etc.).

The "matter of public record" part of the the Judgement is the following:

The EC unanimously rules that:
- The EC has competence on the complaint submitted by Mr Rajlich against the ICGA, a FIDE affiliated organisation, for an alleged violation of FIDE Code of Ethics, but has no appeal competence on the decisions of the ICGA.
- By carrying out proceedings against Mr Rajlich for an alleged violation of ICGA tournament rules and by deciding to disqualify Mr Rajlich from the World Computer Chess Championships 2006/2010, the ICGA has not violated the FIDE Code of Ethics, nor any other FIDE rule or general principle of law.
- Otherwise, by imposing a lifetime ban as a sanction against Mr Rajlich, in absence of a clear statutory basis and without sufficient procedural guarantees for Mr Rajlich, the ICGA did not act in accordance with FIDE rules, this way violating par. 2.2 and 2.2.10 of the FIDE Code of Ethics.
- ICGA has to be sanctioned with a warning and has to be invited to modify their statutes in accordance with FIDE principles and rules.
- A written motivation of the decision will be communicated to the parties by the FIDE Secretariat.

the fide ethics commity is stringently biassed against individuals.
suat atalik (gm) found this out when he sued the turks.
read his open letter here http://chess-news.ru/en/node/9119

"FM Roberto Rivello's commity's decision is full of illogical points
Whatever they have done, for EC any federation can do anything on their players, at the end it will be considered as an internal affair. They may also change the rules and may come up by their own, it looks like EC stands only for judging chess players,not for officials "

just as same done here, any federation (icga) can do anything, and it is a intenrnal affair until swiss law interposes.
change the rules (# 2) come up with own, only for judging players, not officials (IM levy)

[BB+]

One can always argue how close a precedent is, but CAS 1594 (Sheykhov v FILA) similarly had a competitor disqualified after-the-fact and banned, and the CAS retained the former as a sportive decision (and Sheykhov was never heard on the matter), and indeed indicated (#13, #57) that the "state courts" would be the proper venue if the appellant wished to pursue this, while overturning the latter as a matter of law (FILA filed no brief and simply disputed jurisdiction, implying the ban was also viewed as sportive).

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The EC report (Annex 52) to the recent Executive Board meeting specifies:

Case n. 2/2012: Complaint of Mr V Rajlich and C Whittington against International Computer Games Association (ICGA) regarding alleged ethical breaches during internal disciplinary procedure - Respondent found guilty and sanctioned with a warning (judgment prepared by Roberto Rivello).

The report also says the EC is planning to setup its own sub-directory on the FIDE website, with details on pending and decided cases. It mentions that only the operative part of the EC's decision will be published as a matter of course and not the detailed reasons for its findings. It explains that this is to protect the privacy of the parties involved and keep confidential the strict domestic affairs of FIDE.

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One can compare the "warning" here to the sanction in case 16/2013, where the organizer received a "reprimand" for not performing his functions in an impartial and responsible manner.

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I don't know if has moved ahead on his idea, but Levy had suggested that the ICGA disband its afffiliation with FIDE (mostly outdated since the ICCA/ICGA switch in 2002). Either ICGA or FIDE can terminate their agreement at the end of any year (hence my current posting) by notice to the other by Oct 31, and as a vote was taken by ICCA members for approval back , probably the proper form would require one to be taken for termination. There was also some discussion of registering the ICGA as required by Dutch law.

It was also suggested, in response to the FIDE EC analysis, that Rajlich's punishment was not a "sanction" per se but rather a (permanent?) instruction to the ICGA Program Rights Committee, thus falling under an administrative matter which was under the authority of the Board. A rather debatable argument, but one that was not considered previously.

[ABBY1996]

I am wondering who else have bought it can give me some review?