Some fresh dirt from the UK. Private Eye magazine had a lot of fun exposing GM Ray Keene and BrainGames.net and their various legal and financial shenanigans. Keene and BGN handed off to the UK Einstein Group, apparently telling them they had rights to Kramnik and Kasparov. Oops, just Kramnik as it turned out. But that's a separate lawsuit... Anyway, Private Eye didn't have to worry about getting bored and recently wrote that some of the $400,000 in prize money for the July, 2002 Dortmund candidates tournament partially organized/sponsored by Einstein has not been paid to the players.
According to the magazine, the extra pile of money French culture patron Madame Ojjeh (who could fill a few DD sections on her own, but that's not the topic today) kicked in was sent to Einstein, but not all of it has reached the players. From "Private Eye": "One of them, the Bulgarian grandmaster Topalov, complained to the French grandmaster Joel Lautier, a member of Madame Ojjeh's club in Paris. Ojjeh was "furious" to learn that Einstein hadn't already dished out the loot: Topalov was paid shortly afterwards." Let's hope that any remaining obligations are taken care of quickly.
(Full disclosure: I worked for Einstein running the brainsinbahrain.com website for the Kramnik-Fritz match in 2002. I may also do some web work for them in 2003.)
