At the time, I was looking for more detailed information on the charity in the hopes of finding a more direct contact than a non-responsive email box. In most

At the time, I was looking for more detailed information on the charity in the hopes of finding a more direct contact than a non-responsive email box. In most countries, operating as a charity has certain annual reporting requirements. These reports often contain a direct contact (i.e. Agent of Service type contacts). I was able to find the charity registration info from sirene.fr by their address (there were 14 listings out of that address when I just rechecked). Siret# 83037871700029, Siren# is the first 9 digits. There was no phone number listed so I moved onto JOAFE and found that there were no annual reports attached to that Siren #. Backing up I went to RCS, the company & trade register which is required to obtain a kbis-extract (needed to open a bank account as a company in france) and there were no listings on the Lichess or Lichess.org trade names. RCS doesn't allow a search by Siren # and that's where my search died. The complaint was that they were operating, and had not filed the required reports. I don't speak french, so the complaint was in English via a webform and since it was difficult to pursue the matter further at the time, I chose to move on to better things. Edit: I've confirmed that the annual reporting is still a problem on JOAFE. Also, back when this originally happened I had noticed the budget they linked to on googledocs for what they spend on infrastructure was dated, not sure if that is still the case. If anyone with a greater knowledge of OSINT or a command of the french language wants to look into this further there are a number of administrative inconsistencies that might be worth following up on. Personally, I don't see how you can be registered as a french charity and accept donations/other assistance without the appropriate bank account or filing annual reports. Though I admit, I don't have much first-hand knowledge of doing business in France. Either way, its not worth my time taking this any further.