Jaime Sunye Neto


Jaime Sunye Neto is a Brazilian chess player. Awarded the International Master title in 1980 and the Grandmaster title in 1986, he was Brazilian champion seven times, in 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982 and 1983. Sunye Neto was also president of the Brazilian Chess Confederation from 1988 to 1992.
In 1979 he was invited to play in his first Interzonal in Rio de Janeiro as a second representative of the host nation. Untitled at the time, he delivered one of the best performances of his career, finishing fifth overall and defeating several grandmasters, including the tournament winner Lajos Portisch. He was joint second place at Havana 1985 and first at Zenica 1986 and won the South American Zonal in 1989. From 1978 to 1986 he was a mainstay on the Brazilian team at the Chess Olympiad.
In 1996, Sunye Neto ran for president of FIDE. He assembled a powerful team and won the support of almost all of the chess playing countries of Europe. However the whole congress and the election took place under very suspicious circumstances, including one employee of FIDE, Ignatius Leong from Singapore, who was holding a number of proxies, feeling threatened and asking for protection by the American Embassy. He signed the proxies under obvious pressure in favour of the current president. FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov distributed presents and gifts to the delegates and generally exerted a lot of influence and pressure on the delegates especially from the Latin-American and African federations.
After Ilyumzhinov withdrew from an agreement to join the election tickets, he offered members of Sunye Neto's ticket to join his. This offer was accepted by Steven Doyle, Andrei Makarov and Tabbane.
When the votes were counted, Sunye Neto had lost by 87 votes to 44.