Some time ago I reported on the Gabor Pali/Barcza Memorial Scandal I titled the article "Pali No Dinero" as a half-joke (trying to lighten the mood a bit as several professional players were really heated on the issue and I'm not happy either).

Chessvibes recently published an article by Peter Doggers as an update on the subject.

Chessdom & Susan Polgar made similar reports.

In response to these newest developments ... namely, a three year ban on Mr. Pali from the Hungarian Chess Federation ... Robert Ris (who has continued to be openly discussing the issue) wrote the following open letter:

Dear All,

Today I read at Susan’s blog and chessdom.com the news Mr. Pali got banned for 3 years from organizing chess events. If I understand well, the penalty was much lesser, for the following reasons: 1. He never had a prior record of such conduct in the past and 2. He has made arrangements to compensate all the participants.

Probably both true, (at least I witnessed the second point) but up to date I haven’t seen any of my money back. As people could read from my open letter one can see that Mr. Pali made various promises to compensate the players, but every time failed to do so.

Now, 3,5 months later, I still haven’t seen any of my money and therefore I’m very surprised by the soft decision of the disciplinary Committee of Budapest Chess Federation. False promises seem to lessen the penalty…

Anyhow, I once more kindly ask Mr. Pali to transfer the money to the following account:

(…)

Kind regards,

Robert Ris