Interesting. “Bearer bonds”, yes, but had never heard of “bearer shareholders”.
Possession of the shares amounts to ownership of them. Put on a mask and be an incognito owner.
I wonder if Kirsan, Borg and the Agon guys names will turn up.
In the latest issue (#2) of New In Chess there is a lengthy interview with Pal Benko in which he talks a bit about the financial advice that he gave Fischer. It will be interesting to see if Benko’s name crops up on the complete list when it comes out in a few weeks’ time.
In a New York Times story about the “Panama Papers”, the NYT seemed a little miffed that they were not granted the full access to all of the documents that some other journalists and organizations received. Maybe if they had kept their chess column… At some point, they will get their shot at the “Papers” to see what politicos and financial titans names appear. It would be interesting if this leads to the exposure of the dealings of other law offices in Panama and the Caribbean. It appears that there are hundreds of law firms and thousands of corporation making similar financial arrangements to avoid taxes in the region. The named individuals are already scurrying for cover. IMO it is only a matter of time before the names of figures in FIDE, FIFA, and the IOC appear. As usual, the thing that really is annoying is not just the illegal tactics and general corruption, but the surprisingly legal subterfuges which are accepted under the law.
I suspect it has more to do with payback directed at “Pinch” Sulzberger, the less than beloved publisher of the NYTimes and son of revered father “Punch” Sulzberger, the former publisher.
This is indeed the tip of the iceberg. Interestingly, this was not a leak, but a hack of the law firm’s computer system. Could happen again to another similarly situated law firm. God bless the hackers, they shall make us free beings.
There will be many heads rolling and people arrested in the months to come. Just today, there was a police raid on FIFA headquarters related to the Papers. Very quiet these days at Agon and FIDE headquarters… 
Anyone care to sponsor a Chess WC match. You get to pick the venue. 
I’m also wondering if some sponsors of major international chess events will appear (e.g., the Dubai Open, etc.).
I remember that when the Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos announced offering a $5 million purse to host a 1975 Fischer-Karpov World Championship match feeling not only “This will put chess on the map”, but also “This is blood money – Shouldn’t he be returning that money to the people in his own country that we know he stole it from?”
I wonder if anyone else finds this comment ironic considering not-so-distant history…
It’s all a question of intent. Not ironic in the least.
Quite right. I worked for a law firm located 40 Wall Street in the late 1980’s. The building was owned by Marcos. The joke was to ask if anyone had found the floor with all of Imelda’s shoes.
Right . . . as it relates to ‘a question of intent’ - ‘the road to [Hades] is paved with good intentions.’
LOL! Sometimes, Randy, good intentions are just that–good intentions. During The Troubles, the hacking that was done by Polgar’s web master, Gregory Alexander, was not for good intentions. As evidenced by Alexander’s criminal guilty plea in Federal District Court, Alexander’s intent was criminal and without legal justification.
In the case of the Panama papers, there may have been no criminal intent based on the doctrines of either necessity or justification. But, generally speaking, the road to Hell is paved with bad intentions, by bad people. Less commonly, good people with good intentions occasionally produce unintended (or sometimes at least known) negative consequences. Often times good people act in the gray areas of life knowing that there are pluses and minuses to their well intended actions. Their world isn’t the black and white one of accountants and engineers. 
You seem to be suggesting that the mere fact that it was a criminal act meant it ‘was not for good intentions.’ There are plenty of examples throughout history of ‘criminal acts without legal justification’ that were ‘for good intentions.’ Daniel Ellsburg, for one, has said that he expected to get life in prison for leaking the Pentagon Papers.
I’m certainly not suggesting that was the case in the example you cite, but it is often not as black and white as you portray it.
You seem to be suggesting that the mere fact that it was a criminal act meant it ‘was not for good intentions.’ There are plenty of examples throughout history of ‘criminal acts without legal justification’ that were ‘for good intentions.’ Daniel Ellsburg, for one, has said that he expected to get life in prison for leaking the Pentagon Papers.
I’m certainly not suggesting that was the case in the example you cite, but it is often not as black and white as you portray it.
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Incorrect. I’m not saying that the mere fact that Alexander engaged in a criminal act means that it was not for good intentions. Recall he was doing his hacking to obtain information beneficial to Truong and Polgar by breaching attorney client confidentiality between the EB and it’s retained counsel. In Alexander’s plea he fully accepted the base criminality of his action without attempting to justify it by saying he was acting for some greater good. I’m glad to see that you apparently acknowledge that in your last sentence. Sometimes it is a black and white situation as it was with Alexander. Other examples that come to mind are common bank robbers as opposed to those who rob from the rich to give to the poor.
Your reliance on the Ellsberg mater is misplaced. Ellsberg fully intended to present a defense to his purported criminal actions, to wit, that the documents released were improperly labeled as classified. That defense was raised by his counsel, Leonard Boudin, but was rejected by the trial judge. Ellsberg was not permitted to make that defense to the jury. Had he been convicted, he might well have won a new trial with a reversal on that issue. We’ll never know because the trial judge dismissed the prosecution’s case with prejudice in the interests of justice due to government misconduct (the Fielding break in and unauthorized wiretaps). Ellsberg was indeed ready to face whatever sentence he might have received, but his position was that his act was actually not criminal because a) the papers were wrongly classified and b) that the American people had an overriding need to know the lies their government had perpetrated against them.
So you see, there is intent and then there’s intent. In our situation there’s no apparent irony at all between the Panama Papers hacking and Alexander’s hacking.
For some perspective
nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world … share&_r=0
But Brian, wouldn’t you say that Mr. Alexander thought that Truong and Polgar were “right” and thus helping them was a noble cause even if done by illegal means? That would seem intuitively obvious to me. Randy’s “Road to Hades is paved with good intentions” seems to fit that situation, Ellsburg’s, Snowden’s etc. A lot of times people will do wrong things because “the ends justify the means”.
I suggest that you read Alexander’s plea elocution in the court record. I think that will disabuse you of that notion. Polgar’s self-aggrandizing egoism as a noble cause? I think not.
I do hope you aren’t arguing that Ellsberg put paving stones in the path to Hell. He didn’t. Snowden’s revelations have, IMO and that of most informed people, helped the cause of individual privacy rights in the face of an overreaching NSA data collection program. If anything, I’d say that he tore up a few paving stones in the road to Hell that were put down by the NSA and CIA.
Happy Birthday, Daniel Ellsberg.
I have neither access to nor desire to read his elocution. However, the question is not whether they represented a “noble cause”, or even if he realized they didn’t by the time of his elocution. At the time he actually committed the acts, I think he believed they were a noble cause and thus Randy’s phrase applies. Now that said, I think one could make the argument that when a whistleblower goes public from the start they are more likely to actually believe they are serving a noble cause, while if they try to hide their acts they are more likely to be aware that they really shouldn’t be doing this.