“Another significant financial transaction involved a Palm Beach, Florida, estate Trump purchased in 2004 for $41 million, after its previous owner lost it in bankruptcy. In March of 2008, after the real-estate bubble had begun losing air, Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the property for $95 million.”
"In the late 90’'s the company Inteko also became general contractor in the construction of Chess City (City-Chess) in the republic of Kalmykia under agreement of Baturina and the President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Some budgetary funds might have been used in a building, which actually meant a misappropriation of funds.
Years later Baturina argued that Ilyumzhinov had not paid her money for the construction. While Ilyumzhinov argued that she had received the money in full.
Source: “News of the Week” on 23/05/2004"
Note also that Rybolovlev is involved in the phosphate business in Russia similar to PhosAgro, sponsors of the WC match put on by Agon, Ltd. in NYC. It will be interesting to see what comes to light about ownership of offshore entities by Russian Oligarchs, including Kirsan and others associated with Chess Lane and Agon.
I posted this on the Facebook page for our chess club. Normally, 8 or 10 viewers of a post would be a lot. This post generated, thus far, 194 views with a high percentage of them being Russians. A nerve struck? We’ll see.
I doubt that Robert Mueller will spend any time connecting the dots of Kirsan I.'s relationships to various Russian oligarchs and whether or not it has any relevance to Donald Trump. The previous administration put Kirsan on a sanctions list. I am not so sanguine that the present one has any interest in exploring or carrying out further sanctions against individuals, Russian affiliated organizations, or governmental entities. It would be curious but incidental IMO if Kirsan I.'s name shows up in the final report by Mueller’s investigative team. I doubt that he is the “smoking gun” that ties up all of the collusion, cyber attacks, money laundering, eye raising loans, real estate deals, connections with oligarchs by Trump enterprises that are being investigated by Congressional committees (Judiciary, Intelligence) and the Justice Department including the FBI. The convoluted and far reaching nature of such operations are deliberate to deflect, obfuscate, and trap investigators into following false trails or be baited to make charges that are easy to bat away.
In doing some google searching, it was funny to find memes, pictures, jokes, and analysis concerning Trump and chess. There are contrived pictures of Trump in front of 3D and ordinary chessboards. Comparisons are made of him playing checkers while the Russians play chess against him on the world stage. It would probably be a wonder if he played chess. Not sure that he has the attention span or patience to study and play the game. Still waiting to see strategic thinking, understanding of the relationship among various governmental and NGO actors, or coherent policy. I can imagine him knocking over a chessboard and making excuses for his defeat; or changing the result on the pairing sheet.