Florencio Campomanes

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Florencio Campomanes (born 1927) is a Filipino chess player and organizer.

He represented his country at several Chess Olympiads, and met some distinguished opposition as a result, losing games against Pal Benko and Ludek Pachman at Moscow 1956, Oscar Panno at Munich 1958, Mikhail Tal and Miguel Najdorf at Leipzig 1960 and Lev Polugaevsky at Havana 1966.

He is best remembered, however, as the President of international chess organization FIDE. He took the post in 1982 and held it through several controversies, most notably the abandonment of the 1984 World Championship between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov without result, and the break-away from FIDE of the Professional Chess Association in 1993.

Campomanes was succeeded as FIDE President in 1995 by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. He has since been appointed and has remained, to this day, as FIDE Honorary President gracing significant international competitions such as zonal and continental championships, chess olympiads and world chess championships.

Mr. Campomanes was the only Filipino to ever hold the highest position in the world chess governing body based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

On February 5, 2003, the Philippine anti-graft court Sandiganbayan convicted Florencio Campomanes, the former FIDE president for failure to account for the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) government funds amounting to PhP12.876 million (US$238,745.086 at PhP53.932=$1). The PSC entrusted these funds to the FIDE for the World Chess Olympiad in Manila, hosted by the Philippine government from June 6 to 25, 1992. Subsequently , Florencio Campomanes was sentenced to one year and 10 months imprisonment.