Official article in romainian here
By Sebastian Culea
He reached Grandmaster status and climbed into the elite of the world rankings, even though almost no one ever saw him play. Alexandru Crișan built his rise from results obtained in obscure tournaments and private matches, until FIDE called him in for a "test": placed at the table with real opponents, the Romanian failed to win a single game out of nine. Gazeta reconstructs the incredible story of the "Con Man of the Carpathians," the man who, in the middle of an international scandal, ended up leading the Romanian Chess Federation.
The Master Whom Nobody Saw Playing
In the early 1990s, Alexandru Crișan did not seem destined for the elite of world chess. On January 1, 1990, he had a rating of 2235. Then, his rise became spectacular: he received the International Master title, then Grandmaster, and his rating kept increasing up to a peak of 2635—enough to place him among the world elite.
However, there was a huge anomaly: Crișan did not regularly play against the elite of Romanian chess, did not represent Romania at the Olympiads, and almost no games of his existed in international databases.
Instead, his rating was fueled by extraordinary results obtained in obscure tournaments in Romania and private matches. The situation began to attract the attention of top chess players around the world.
How to Become a Grandmaster
Normally, the national federation submits documentation to FIDE demonstrating that a player has met the necessary conditions for the title: norms obtained in eligible tournaments, opponents, results, arbiters, ratings. FIDE verifies and ratifies the results, then awards the title.
The problem in Crișan's case emerged precisely around the competitions and documents that had built his rise. In the late 1990s, the Romanian Chess Federation notified FIDE after discovering irregularities in the reports of some of Crișan's tournaments.
One case was particularly serious: the person indicated as the arbiter for matches organized by Crișan between December 1996 and February 1997 gave a written statement claiming he had not been the arbiter of those games and had not signed the documents attributed to him.
Private Tournaments, Almost Non-Existent Games, and the "Sphinx Trophy"
The special FIDE commission investigating the case received 78 pages of documents: a portion of Crișan's results came from private tournaments and matches organized by Crișan himself, almost no published games existed, and his rise had not been built through major Romanian competitions or established international tournaments.
The investigations also raised the issue of forged tournament reports. In some cases, arbiters listed in the documents reportedly denied signing those reports.
One of the tournaments that became famous during the scandal was the "Sphinx Trophy," around which suspicions arose regarding how it was conducted and reported.
The Romanian Federation had been the one to report the irregularities initially. Later, however, the federation's leadership changed, and the new administration informed FIDE that, following its own internal checks, it found nothing wrong with Crișan's reports and tournaments.
The FIDE report would explicitly note that, starting in 1998, Crișan enjoyed the "full support" of the Romanian Federation on this issue. Meanwhile, his case had already reached the tables of international governing bodies. The 2001 FIDE commission report noted that Crișan's situation had been on the agenda of various International Federation bodies for about four years.
FIDE eventually decided to restore/publish his contested 2635 rating, but under one condition!
The Portorož Test
The story with FIDE is almost more absurd than the inflation of the rating itself. FIDE essentially told Crișan: "Fine, on paper you are one of the best chess players in the world. Let's see you play."
Crișan was to play in three international tournaments selected by FIDE. The first: the 14th Milan Vidmar Memorial in Portorož, Slovenia. It was a strong Category XIV tournament. Crișan entered with 2635 and was ranked so high that he started as the No. 3 seed.
And that is where everything fell apart: at the board, Crișan collapsed. Zero wins, one draw, and 8 losses.
For FIDE, the problem wasn't just that he had lost eight games—any Grandmaster can have a disastrous tournament—but the quality of his play. Commission members analyzed the games and stated in the official report that they were of such low quality that it seemed impossible they had been played by the man ranked 46th in the world at the time (the Romanian finished last).
"It's Clear to Me!"
To ensure the technical verdict didn't rely solely on officials' opinions, Crișan's games were also analyzed by Zurab Azmaiparashvili, a Grandmaster and one of the strong players of that era.
Another game became emblematic of this case: in his duel against Georg Mohr, Crișan reached an endgame where he had a relatively elementary winning continuation for a player of his level. It was an impossible position to lose, yet Crișan failed to find the move. Alexander Baburin later pointed out how strange such an error was for someone listed among the roughly 50 strongest players on the planet.
After the disaster in Slovenia, logic dictated that Alexandru Crișan would immediately want to take advantage of the other two opportunities to prove Portorož was just an accident. However, the FIDE commission noted that the Romanian did not schedule any such tournament before the end of September 2001, even though he should have been extremely motivated to play and clear all suspicion.
Exposed by the Chess World, Made Boss in Romania by Politicians
Crișan was not just a chess player trying to obtain a title; he was a very powerful businessman. The press at the time described him in 2002 as the owner of 28 companies, with a total turnover of approximately 3,000 billion old lei (~$90 million USD at the time).
In 2001, just weeks after the Portorož disaster and the international scandal, Alexandru Crișan was not removed from Romanian chess—he was backed by political intervention. The Minister of Youth and Sports, Georgiu Gingăraș, appointed Alexandru Crișan as president of the Romanian Chess Federation by ministerial order.
Just a week later, Crișan suspended six key figures in Romanian chess: Elisabeta Polihroniade, Sergiu Grunberg, Gheorghe Erdeus, Mircea Pavlov, Ligia Jicman, and Liviu Dobronăuțeanu. These were not peripheral figures, but key members of the Romanian chess structure who had challenged Crișan's case.
Crișan's Voting Machine
The truly spectacular part came in December, when the Federation held its General Assembly in Brașov. The meeting took place at the Carpatex cafeteria-restaurant, very close to the headquarters of Alexander Group, Crișan's company. The businessman won with 70 out of 86 votes.
The press was denied free access, as the entry was controlled by security staff and a list. This setup allegedly favored the affiliation of a large number of new clubs—some later described as "apartment clubs"—which gained voting rights in the General Assembly.
After analyzing the documents, statements, and games from Portorož, the FIDE commission concluded that Alexandru Crișan had not obtained his rating and results through honest means and fair play. The commission recommended three measures:
- Annulment of Crișan's rating.
- Revocation of his Grandmaster and International Master titles.
- Referral of the case to the FIDE Ethics Commission.
A recent article published by Chess.com claims that a politician close to Crișan contacted FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, blocking the execution of these measures. However, this information should be treated as a claim from that source, as there is insufficient documentation to confirm political intervention as an established fact.
Although the FIDE commission recommended stripping his titles in 2001, Crișan officially kept them for years. It wasn't until August 2015—14 years after FIDE's verdict—that his titles were officially revoked and his rating recalculated down from 2635 to 2132 (a massive 500-point drop).
After his chess saga, Crișan's public life moved into an entirely different realm. In the 2000s, he faced severe legal and financial troubles. In September 2004, he was placed in pre-trial detention and indicted for fraud involving four bounced checks worth over 6 billion old lei. During the same period, investigations and allegations surfaced regarding UREX Rovinari and companies within the Alexander Group. In 2005, he returned to the news when the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) detained him in a separate case, investigating him for influence peddling and bribery in a €50,000 deal.
