At 10am GMT, the Salt Lake Tribune ran a financial news service report stating that Garry Kasparov is being sued by First International Bank of Israel. Story is here. I spent almost three years with Kasparov Chess Online, from its beginning in July, 1999. I certainly wasn't privy to these financial dealings, but it sounds bizarre to me. So many KCO board members had conflicts of interest that the company was practically doomed from the start, although the site itself did well.
To my knowledge, Garry hasn't been much involved with KCO since having a big battle with the investors in mid-2002. The Israeli money-men thought it was more important to employ a group of Israeli programmers costing over $100,000 per month than have Grandmasters, writers, and other chess people costing a fraction of that.
Instead of cutting back, they went down with the ship over Kasparov's protests. The investors insisted on cutting all the talented Moscow employees that Kasparov considers family (and who ARE family in at least one case) and their relationship went downhill after that.
Kasparov got tired of watching them throw money away and make a mess of the website that had his name all over it. I'm not surprised he bailed out. It looks like the question now is if he is allowed to leave at all.
