Hi, and welcome to a very special episode of the Chicken Chess Club podcast. We had the honor of having Timur Turlov, a FIDE presidential candidate, as our guest today. And he has... well, we had a small, I would say, chat on Twitter. I asked him, 'Well, why don't you come here and answer all the tough questions?' He said, 'Why not? You might actually, you know, get to know me better and in a more positive light.' So, that's what we're here to do today. And thanks a lot for coming, Timur.
Thank you, Peter. It's my pleasure to be here.
My first question, well, also, maybe I should set the premise. I mean, we are a very sort of chess political podcast. So, probably we have seen all your other interviews. Let's say, well, you have done several. So, we will try to dig more into the substance here. But I will start with a bit of a personal question of something, well, that's a bit difficult for me to grasp. You are an incredibly successful person, right? I mean, you are head of the International Chess School Federation. You're head of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation. But, much more importantly, you are the CEO and majority shareholder of Freedom Holding. I think an 11 billion dollar company on the Nasdaq stock exchange. If I'm correct, right? So, it's a bit difficult, I guess, for me and others to grasp why do you want to be the FIDE president?
Actually, chess became my passion when my kids started to go to school. So, I'm not a chess professional. That's obvious. But I've seen how great, how impactful chess could be for kids, for society, and how this can actually help to overcome the challenges of the digital world, of all this TikTok, Instagram, all this digital scrolling day-to-day. And here, 4 years ago, when I stepped into the shoes of president of Kazakhstan Chess Federation, I actually realized that a lot of different sports federations have a lot of expertise. And there already was a lot of professional team in Kazakhstan Chess Federation. But I think with my appearance there, we collected everything together into one solid piece. So we put right project management, right budgeting, right funding for our program. And with the professional help of my team, of a professional team, we actually delivered, I think, good results and achieved a lot, held a lot of, hosted a lot of FIDE tournaments, hosted a lot of different open tournaments in Kazakhstan. We launched 4 years ago successfully a youth program to help young talents to be developed and to help them with subsidies to get access to coaching, to travel to tournaments, and make sure that we have enough tournaments at home. And I've seen how... I know that that's actually a marathon, that's not a sprint. We can't achieve something great even spending a lot of money. We have to go step by step, year by year, but if we're doing that, I see that I can deliver something not just in business. I can deliver something also in different nonprofit activities. And this is very impactful for society. So, my here... my... I think Freedom was one of the key sponsors of FIDE for the last 4 years. So, we participated in sponsorship and were co-organizer for some events in Kazakhstan, some beautiful events in Europe, in Washington D.C., in Cyprus. And I realized that maybe I could be a great candidate for FIDE because after Arkady's decision to step down, I realized that maybe I have to go and serve to FIDE, to help to build what I did in Kazakhstan on a more global scale. Because that could be beneficial both for me and for the organization, with all my commitments to refresh FIDE's management team, to bring some new, fresh blood there, to protect the stuff which was achieved. Because in my opinion, FIDE still had a lot of achievements in Arkady's term. He did a lot of good. But on the same coin, I still believe that I can open up a lot of new opportunities because, of course, what we as a Freedom... so the company was founded in 2008 when I just was married and we expected our first baby, and in the middle of a financial crisis. And we've gone through many different challenges, including disposal of Russian business in 2008, which was, I think, not the most fun events, which I frankly never expected. Maybe because I'm not such a professional in all this geopolitics stuff. But in the end of the day, we survived and here built one of the most successful digital banks in Kazakhstan, and scaling and building great partnership with Bank of New York, with Citibank, with Nvidia. So, a sovereign AI hub in Kazakhstan, a 2.5 billion dollar project. We just signed a memorandum with Citibank to finance. I think it's... We also have a good relationship with the French Chess Federation. Despite all the challenges, I think I still was able to deal with first-class companies and maintain very high standards even despite a huge scrutiny which we were under in some last recent years. So, I believe I still can open up a lot of new partnerships for FIDE and bring a lot of new sponsorship. And in the end of the day, I'm not running for some, I don't know, prestige, pity. I... looks like in my personal opinion I have enough in my current role. But maybe if I know that a lot of great federations with great leaders already exist and now they don't need much advice on how to develop. They just need some resources, some help with IT stuff, which I think we are good at managing. Actually, a team of 10,000 people in Freedom Holding, and I'm the most transparent company in Kazakhstan. Just because we have to be like an accelerated filer in the United States for the Securities and Exchange Commission. And that also was a big challenge. So, when you are the most transparent, you're also facing some challenges which a lot of companies never met. But in the end of the day, I truly believe that this transparency, my knowledge in project management, and my ability to continue work which I started even despite the election brought me to the position that maybe I should be the right person to make FIDE united and to successfully go to the next step and still protect what was already achieved.
Transparency, I saw you have a lot in your program and it's actually going to be my next question. But just before we go to that, it's obvious that you have organized a lot of successful tournaments and that things are going great in the Kazakhstan Chess Federation, etc. and so on. And I think also the points with, you know, how, you know, chess is beneficial for kids, a lot of studies have approved of. But well, I still have one question to you about why you want to be president. But to be fair, that question should be said to all three candidates. But well, you are the one who is here. But from the chess player perspective, we would think, isn't the FIDE presidency a full-time job?
In my experience, here, to run a bigger international organization is not about micromanagement of staff. That's about building a strong team, delegating to this team, to the professional team, different spheres of life. And this rebalance of power in FIDE, I think, is necessary. And with my experience dealing with the Kazakhstan Chess Federation, when I am also a president, maybe not a CEO, not an executive, but I think I successfully accomplished this role. I found the right people, put them in the right position, and still found enough time to do my job, to deal with key customers, with key federations, with key governments, with key sponsors. That still was my priority, even despite that's not a full-time job for me, obviously. Here, that's still a very important part of my life and I'm fully committed to do this job. Because sometimes when you have to be a person in a not so large organization and too much power concentrated in one hand, that's also not very good. And when you're sure that it's not a full-time job for you, you will be better dependent on the professional team, on the FIDE Council, which should be much more powerful. And which will be more powerful, I'm sure, despite who will win this election. And here, I'm also sure that we will still have new staff in FIDE who will be more focused on digital developments, on marketing, on the PR side, on commercial sponsorships. We need just more human resources for that. And of course, we also need some financial backup, which I could be able to, I hope, provide and organize.
I think we will... I have specific questions about that, both your team and your financial help, so let's go about that later. But I promised you to talk about transparency, so let's do that. I mean, well, you promise, you know, better transparency in FIDE, but by logic then there is something that you don't think is fully transparent in FIDE at the time. Where do you see weaknesses in FIDE's transparency at the moment?
I think we need much more disclosures, and that's a very normal practice which I successfully learned in my own business when we just became a public company 10 years ago. In the last 10 years, our corporate disclosures became much, much, much bigger. So, we have to publish some critical minutes of some discussion. We should make sure that we will disclose budget in an even more detailed way. So, not just the P&L statements or balance sheet. We need a much better description of some business process. Maybe disclosure of compensation to executive team. Not all salaries, because that's not the best practice, but key executives and key paid people in the organization. That's transparency in some... building some controls, right controls, and making sure that these controls are in place and efficient enough. And these controls are about actually running policies, which is important.
You are mentioning, sorry, you are mentioning certain specific things. Well, as you said, you were first running on Dvorkovich's tickets, but actually Dvorkovich, I mean, despite promising more transparency, there were things he rolled back. You meant, I mean, one thing would be that before Dvorkovich there was actually public council meetings and also the minutes of council meetings were very specific. How will you go about that? Would you... what do you think about public council meetings? Do you think minutes should reflect who voted on what and we could see what was actually debated? Today we basically just see only the decisions.
I think yes. I'm supportive to this idea of making more public, at least for some important ones. Maybe even despite that not a general practice, but I definitely support you to make minutes public and make these council meetings more transparent.
Mhm. You also mentioned salaries. I think salaries have never been public, but income of council members, I mean, let's say council members being part of an appeals committee or having certain jobs with FIDE was always public before. The work of salaries of key individuals has never been public, but are public, for instance, in FIFA. Do I understand you correctly that this is something that you are promising to actually change?
Okay. What about NDAs? That's also something that was brought in. For instance, quite recently there has been, I think, one employee was mentioning that FIDE had some legal case where there was talks about, I think, some kind of, I'm not sure, but a former employee was suing FIDE and some kind of compromise was made and such. And well, that is expenses for FIDE, for lawyers, for the compensation, but also perhaps about the general work environment within FIDE. Is it reasonable to have NDAs blocking that or should it actually be open so that we know what goes on in the FIDE leadership?
That depends, because sometimes some commercial negotiations could not be completely public. So, it's not a best practice to make everything completely transparent for 200%, but I think the key political decisions are necessary to make much more transparent. And it's not a question we need to make secret. We need to find this right balance with the help of our FIDE Council to distinguish stuff which could be part of commercial secret and do some secrets, unfortunately, we have to keep because of NDA with sponsors, because of some other stuff. But they definitely, all of them, should be public to Council, and Council should also accurately decide which information maybe not have to be 100% public, but we will try to make what we can. I understand that will be the best defense for the organization.
I understand that towards sponsors and such there will have to be some kind of secrecy, but well, NDAs could also be seen as political protection for the FIDE leadership, but that you are saying will not be the case if I understand correctly, right?
Mhm. Then you also mentioned your own sort of sponsorship to chess and to FIDE in general. I think the word I heard in several interviews was that you would be the backstop. Is that correct? What does it actually mean? Does it mean that Freedom Holding is, you know, promising, or is it you? But also, what does backstop mean? Just to sort of explain it to us.
I truly believe that, of course, FIDE should not rely on a single sponsor or something like that, and we will work as hard as we can to diversify sponsorship for FIDE and make sure that FIDE will be diversified enough in different sources of funding. But all of us, I think, we all believe that a two-year calendar is necessary. So, we need to decide on events much in prior, and sometimes it's just impossible to secure funding two years before events, and that's why we don't have a calendar, I assume. And I will backstop that to make sure that even if we will not find sponsorship for the event, I will become an anchor sponsor for that. And that maybe will help to change that problem of short-term planning and some financial instability. We need, of course, a much larger development fund, which is very important to help, because many continents don't have enough open tournaments, and for their players it's very difficult to get qualification. They don't have enough arbiters, and we need to help them to develop arbiters, because even if they have very talented players, for them to get international master titles, grandmaster titles is very complicated. So, I think this development fund of FIDE should be increased, and I also promised to backstop this development fund to make sure that we will have, I don't know, we're still working on numbers, but maybe like 5 million, 7 million to protect this development fund. And yes, I will work hard to make sure that we will not be a single sponsor for this initiative, to make sure that we will diversify funding, but even if we will not, I personally will backstop that.
So, basically you are personally guaranteeing that. I mean, I guess you also read the sort of latest verification committee report, right? And they are actually talking about that the development fund is being depleted. In the previous report, they were arguing that because of FIDE's expenses, mainly salaries and employees, there was the risk that the only place to take the money from would be the development fund. And in this year's report, they are saying that actually yes, this has happened. They've only spent 60% of the development funds, so you can see there is a considerable drop in money for the development fund, while the verification committee says that well, it's due to the expenses of FIDE. So, I mean, well, I would argue that this is what happened under Dvorkovich's leadership. And perhaps some see you as the continuation of that, but you are saying that what the verification committee is saying is not going to happen under you.
So, that's my public commitments. And that's... I think with my leadership we will be able to secure this financing. This will be my personal commitment, which I never had before. And even despite we backed up some events, I think now we will be much more systematic and it will be much more transparent for me also, all this finance of FIDE and all my financial commitments to that. And I will be able to better manage that stuff. For... I think now I have a much bigger role. So, I never was any... I never was part of management of FIDE. I never was part of the organization. I just was a commercial partner and national federation, just a member of FIDE. Now I think I will have much, much bigger responsibility.
That is clear. You have responsibility there. But from us, from those of us who've followed the FIDE elections for a long time, it's also scary when, I mean, incredibly generous as far as I heard you, you promised several millions to the development fund that you would guarantee. But this is something we have seen often. We saw Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. He was making big, big promises, which then worked for a while. Then Dvorkovich took over. We could see that the verification reports saying that in '19 and '20, a lot of new sponsors flooded into FIDE. But it sort of seems to dry up when the, you know, the new savior comes in with a lot of money. So, I mean, I'm not at all being ungrateful. You are making a huge promise here. But is this an, I mean, sustainable way to run FIDE, that we get a new savior who gives his personal money? I mean, wouldn't it be better to develop that FIDE becomes a product sponsors really want to buy?
Of course, we will work hard on products, on sponsorship. I'm talking about backstop, not about my personal unlimited liability to support the organization. And I hope I have a track record of doing business. And I have a track record in sponsoring chess, not just professional chess, also social initiatives, for many years. And I think I'm also... I'm not a politician, so I'm a businessman. I know the cost of my commitments. And I know that if I will not keep my commitments, it will be very, very hard to do my business. I'm doing finance, so commitments and promises are 100% of your success in finance. Once again, so we will... Sometimes, that's a chicken and egg problem. If you don't have a backstop, it's very difficult to develop products and promise some sponsorship. We all may have great intentions, that I will talk to... I will also, since the very first day, start to talk with international companies, with my partners. And we'll try to convince them to join that hyperscalers. Now, I have a lot of ideas. I have a lot of my personal connections. And of course, I will work extremely hard to get external money to FIDE, to better develop the online platform for FIDE, and make sure that FIDE will not be just a professional championships governor, but will be governor of all chess. Now, with some respect of other players... So, once again, in my opinion, sometimes to get to the next level, efforts is not enough. Sometimes you just need money and people to develop. And even in the history of country development, some external help may dramatically accelerate progress. And I will just try to accelerate this progress and make sure that when I will step down, if I will not be elected next time, I'm not going to spend all my life in FIDE, and I want to make sure that FIDE will be sustainable when I will step down.
Just because that has happened before, does it also... I mean, well, the presidents before you have been there for a very long time, and Dvorkovich was, well, first he was promising maximum eight years, but then he wanted to run longer. Is that a promise that you will sort of not necessarily reintroduce sort of election terms, but you are planning for like how many periods? Maximum two, for instance, would be a question.
I think I'm definitely not interested to get infinite... to be an infinite governor, so I'm definitely an advocate for limitation of terms. But I think we need to discuss with the community and with the council how that should be structured. And we should need to take into account the best practices in other sport organizations like FIFA, like other organizations. But yes, it definitely should be limited, but possibly two terms. So, how long should be these terms? Reasonably long, not longer than other sport organizations.
Fair enough. Let's change the subject a bit. You mentioned that it was sort of quite dramatic that you suddenly became the presidential candidate because first you were the deputy, that well, which was sanctioned by the European Union 3 days before the deadline. Well, now you're running together with Vishy Anand. Well, he's a former coach, so I know him very well. But well, it would be a reasonable question to ask why these roles? Why not Vishy as the president and you as the deputy? I mean, you are the one with the business insight and know how to run things. Well, Vishy could be the more ceremonial person at the top.
I think Vishy is extremely important because he's a legendary professional chess player. And I think we have to be a great team because I will be able to appeal to him all the professional questions and discuss with him, make sure that he will advise me on all professional chess. And he promised me to be involved in management. So, he will be an active vice president in this term to protect what was already achieved and to make sure that we will sustainably move forward. And I think we can be a great team because I will be more in charge of money, sponsorship, project management, and organizational stuff. And he will be my assistant to make sure that we will sustainably move forward in professional chess.
As we mentioned, like there was this sudden change 3 days before. From outside, it looks a bit like you have taken over the already in motion Dvorkovich campaign team. I would like to ask a few questions about that. For instance, Berik Balgabaev, is he part of your campaign team? I mean, he was, for instance, seen in Hong Kong and in Addis Ababa. He is the former sort of right hand of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and also the presidential advisor of Dvorkovich, very much directly involved in his election campaign in 2018. Is he a member of your team?
Any idea what he was doing at these events then? Or that was perhaps campaigning for Dvorkovich?
I think he's still an employee of FIDE and...
He is a presidential advisor for sure, yes.
Yeah, he still has enough reasons to visit different... I know Berik and I know him the last four years. He's also from Kazakhstan and that's, well, we know each other for sure, but he's not part of my campaign. He does his job for FIDE.
Okay, I mean, he was in Addis Ababa at least as a presidential advisor. I think that the FIDE president wasn't there, but leave that aside. Also, Mark Glukhovsky has been a lot in the media recently, especially the few days, due to some videos that were leaked. I have seen that he has mentioned they have been manipulated by AI. Is Glukhovsky a part of your team?
Glukhovsky advised me a little bit. He's not a senior person. So, I stepped into the shoes of president very briefly. And of course, now, actually, I started to engage with different...
People, and he did some, he provided some advice for me, but frankly, I met Mark very recently. I met him first time properly when he started to run for presidency. So, I think like months ago. We had a couple of meetings, but he's definitely not any senior person in my team. He advised me for some questions and helped with some minor organizing items.
Mhm. Based on what these videos are saying, but also the impressions of others at these meetings, it sounded like he was campaigning for you. Was it perhaps possible that someone was campaigning on your behalf without your knowledge?
I'm very thankful that actually in the chess world there is a lot of people who know me better than I know them. And I appreciate that a lot of people support my candidacy and try to help me to win. Now, not 100% of everything is under my control. I appreciate any support and any advice, and I still try to better understand the environment. Because, sorry, I'm not a professional chess politician, and I'm still trying to understand who is who, and that takes some time. And I think this is not the wise decision when you're coming to some not maybe most well-planned campaign in my life to build everything from scratch. So, I'm meeting people. I'm trying to better understand, but I am my own campaign manager. And I'm taking some advice, I'm meeting some people, but I'm not relying on anyone else and I'm not ordering other people to act on my behalf.
And so, to sort of the messages in this video, well, you're saying he doesn't work for you. So, to comment on what's in these videos you've seen makes no sense, as far as I understand you.
For me it's very, very difficult to discuss this video. I'm regretful about the people who actually did that, and Mark is also denying that it was an accurate statement. But once again, there's not much respect in all this situation. And I also would not be happy to, I'm definitely not sharing the contents of this video. So, it also does not look like something which I can appreciate. I do not appreciate what was in that video despite who did that.
I would argue that if what's in the video is true, which I have absolutely no knowledge of, one could see it as whistleblowing where it might actually be that the means would be justified. I mean, historically there's been a lot of rumors about bribing at FIDE elections, but it's never been proven. Recording a conversation could be seen as a good deed if it sort of uncovers a bad practice, I would argue.
No, so once again, I don't want to speculate much there, but I think everybody should respect the law and should respect what the law allows you to do or not. And when you publish on some anonymous resources some spy documents, it's not much. That's definitely, I know what whistleblowing means. And I participated in many developments of my own whistleblowing policy. And that's not whistleblowing. So, that's a different stuff. That's a private conversation even if it's true. And yes, I also was very angry to hear that and definitely not sharing these values for sure. But once again, nobody is even sure if it's true or not. So, because...
that it's published from an anonymous website, sorry, a Twitter account that is just created. Of course, it would be much stronger if someone stood forward and said it about that. Um, well, about your team. Um, I can see that on this call Milan Dinich, he seems to be part of your team. He's a team member of your campaign if I understand correctly then.
Yes. On the ChessBase website, it says that he's the press officer of FIDE. But that could be that ChessBase is not fully updated, right? But at least previously he has worked for FIDE a number of times. I think Milan...
I think Milan now is not working for FIDE. So, he's not on duty in FIDE. I clarified that before we started to work, and he's made a statement that he is not an employee of FIDE because that's, I think, very important from a legal standpoint.
Mhm. I understand. I know that there have been a lot of protests. I mean, protests generally happen quite often in FIDE elections. I know that you have filed a protest yourself against the Rosenstein ticket. Why?
So, why did I make a complaint?
Yeah, yeah. Just, I mean, tell us about the complaint. That's what I mean. Sorry.
I think just because we have to respect, we have to respect the election code. Whatever it is. And I think it's important for all candidates to respect this code. Now, if we need to make this precedent to make sure what is allowed and what is restricted. If our legal team believes that that is restricted, another candidate does that, we should file a complaint and make sure that an independent commission will verify if our assumption is right or not, because maybe we also can do like that. If that's a legal practice, fine. If this is not a legal practice, so let's not let our competitors use that. I think that's very simple logic.
