YEREVAN. – By getting the seat of FIDE president Garry Kasparov wanted to fulfill his political ambitions, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said.

His remark came in response to the Armenian News-NEWS.am correspondent's request to comment on a 2-year ban for Kasparov.

Ilyumzhinov said he offered Kasparov to assume the post of the president of International Chess Academy, but the chess payer refused.

“To get position of FIDE president was Kasparov's political decision. With the help of this position, he wanted to be engaged in politics and went for vote-buying for this goal. I'm sorry that he was involved in corruption. We are friends with Kasparov, and I consider him an outstanding chess player. I think that as the 13th world champion, he had to work for the sake of chess, but he went into politics,” Ilyumzhinov said.

The reason for the creation of a commission on ethics was publication in the The New York Times as of January 2014, said the president of FIDE.

“The journalists of the newspaper obtained a contract between Kasparov and Leong, according to which Kasparov offered $500,000 for a vote of Singapore during the elections of federation's president. In addition, if Leong managed to attract the votes of ten more countries, he was supposed to get $100,000 for each vote,” FIDE president said.

According to him, the committee members were investigating the case, interviewing the lawyers, Kasparov himself and Leong for more than a year. As a result, the commission found Kasparov and the former FIDE general secretary Ignatius Leong guilty of violating the moral code of FIDE, and they were banned for two years from holding official FIDE positions or participating in FIDE meetings.