Mats from Sweden writes in to say "a high official has been caught embezzling several hundred thousand SEK (that's almost 100K $) from the Swedish national chess society. The national radio news this morning said that, among other things, the person had been living in a luxury hotel in Gothenburg for 6 months straight - all meals included! - all paid for by the chess society. Some people, eh!"
Some people indeed. 100K can buy you a lot of herring! I certainly hope he remembered to pay the 20% FIDE tax on that. A Swedish jail is one thing, but there's no anger like a bureaucrat who doesn't get his cut! I think most federations and chess societies would be happy to have that much money to steal in the first place. I've heard some pretty hair-raising corruption scandals in chess over the years. Entrenched bureaucracies with powerful executives and little oversight do tend to grow sticky fingers.
Or salty, herring-scented fingers, as the case may be. Any more info on this? I was reading The Local for a few days while preparing a few Kasparov business speeches last month in Goteborg and Stockholm. They don't seem to have anything on this yet. But my search was interrupted by the "Swedish women favour online sex" article, so who knows.
I wish I was a mouse....
ohh my beloved Sweden. How I miss it :-( And I'm not Swedish
That hit mainstream news again? What's happened since the last time? I read it in Sweden's biggest tabloid a month ago. Of course, the scandal was already known for a long time. Not that I know a lot of details. His name is Göran Terninger, member of FIDE's Executive Board. It's the same hotel, Gothia Towers, as the players stayed at during the European Team Championships 2005 (the event took place in the same building). The leadership of the Swedish Chess Federation has received a lot of harsh criticism for its actions and non-actions around the matter since it became known. What have they been trying to hide, etc. An extra congress is to be held this Sunday.
> most federations and chess societies would be happy to have that much money to steal in the first place.
lol, great minds think alike!
re: Swedish women and cybersex, I'm of the opinion that "Inge" is most likely an overweight, fortyish, balding Goteborg truck driver named Sven . . .
stonewaller- you're on the right track, but not quite. It's an upper-class fortysomething English Home Counties Tory MP caled Giles
Stonewaller2 wrote: "I'm of the opinion that 'Inge' (from the Swedish cybersex story linked in Mig's initial post) is most likely an overweight, fortyish, balding Goteborg truck driver named Sven."
al wrote: "It's an upper-class fortysomething English Home Counties Tory MP caled Giles"
Did anybody here see the Broadway version of "Closer"? Because I'm pretty sure what follows was left out of the film version (which I never saw)....
The theater version had a hilarious scene of two characters having cybersex. They're seated at opposite ends of the stage, representing remote locations, and the words each one types in are shown in real-time on a huge screen above the stage.
They're both middle-aged men. But one is presenting himself as an oversexed 14-year old girl...and the other guy buys it hook, like and sinker.
Whenever I contemplate trying cybersex, I think of this scene.
No I don't. I think about what happened to poor Sherzer. (There, now I've tied the two threads together!)
The film has it, too: Jude Law is the oversexed girl, unshaven and smoking while he types his girly lines. But eventually this brings about a happy relationship, so I guess cyberlove knows no limits.
If he has a brother (cousin) that is a governer he might end up becoming president of that federation. Stranger things have happen.
We ought to not be so cocky ourselves. There's a lot of questions being asked of USCF finances right now. The latest set of financial statements posted on the USCF web site has cash balances that don't match. How much cash is in the till as of the end of February? One report gives one amount; another gives another amount. This is probably an honest mistake but it still looks bad.
I hope that the accountants fix things for March's reports.
Jack
jacklemoine.blogspot.com
ok guys, lose the cybersex angle. Sweden's natural beauty, wonderful towns and calm, cool, civilised (and beautiful) people are why its a great country.
I misread it. I thought it said, Swedish women favor online chess! Keep hoping...
Completely Off-topic:
I'm rooting for Anderi Volokitin being the next Karpov!
On-topic: I think American girls are far better looking than Swedish girls, but there are few exceptions.
...yes, and McDonalds is the best food in the world. We know.
So the biggest health problem in the U.S. of A. is that we have such an overabundance of cheap, high-calorie food that we're all so fat we're about to be sick? In global and historical terms, that's an awful good problem to have.
Never been to Sweden but my father's mother's parents were born there. Grandpa must have had a fairly high opinion of Swedish gal's looks. And it's a well-known fact that women who play chess are generally better-looking as well. Particularly when they're teenagers who can emasculate you across the 64 squares. ;)