Bengaluru: A cheating scandal rocked the chess world on Monday after 22-year-old Ukraine-born GM Kirill Shevchenko was expelled from the Spanish Team Championships on grounds of reportedly hiding and using a mobile phone in the toilet during his games. If found guilty by the FIDE Ethics Commission, it could turn out to be a rare case of a highly-ranked player – who has consistently been in the top 100 and top 50 – being involved in cheating.

Action against Shevchenko, who turned Grandmaster at 14 years and 9 months and currently represents Romania, was brought about after Francisco Vallejo, his Round 2 opponent in the Spanish Team Championship Honor Division in Melilla complained that he was away from the board for too long.

When asked by the arbiter, Shevchenko reportedly said that he was making trips to the toilet since he was feeling unwell. Other players and members of the organising committee too noticed his suspicious toilet visits and following a search, a phone was found and confiscated.

According to a Chess.com report, an organizing committee member saw Shevchenko visiting an individual toilet cubicle, and there found a mobile phone with the handwritten note, “¡No toques! ¡El teléfono se dejó para que el huésped contestara por la noche!” (”Don’t touch! This telephone has been left so the owner can answer it at night!”).

Similarities were found in the handwriting and ink used on the note and Shevchenko’s scoresheets for rounds one and two and confiscated phone’s time zone was supposedly set to an hour ahead of that of Spain – technically to that of Romania.

In a statement the Spanish Chess Federation said that they have modified Shevchenko’s results from the first two rounds – a draw and a win – to count as forfeits and losses.

“For me I would say things started to get strange at move six. He played his move and left the playing hall for more than 10 minutes and this was repeated many times in the next moves. I thought he had some stomach problems! But at some point, I decided to go out to see where he was and he was standing outside the toilet room and when he saw me, he went back to the playing hall,” GM Bassim Amin, who Shevchenko drew against in Round 1, told Chess.com.

Shevchenko is understood to have denied all charges against him so far.

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