Either way, chess.com kept their side of the deal, their side of the deal was "and we can ban you at any time in the future for any reason or even no reason whatsoever". Frankly that strikes me as a very fair term in a deal for reinstating a admitted cheaters access to your tournaments with large cash prizes...
As stated in the report, the reason he was banned again was that the insinuations from Magnus caused the chess.com team to reevaluate whether or not they could trust him not to cheat going forward, especially with an upcoming tournament with a million dollar prize on the horizon. After this reevaluation, they decided their previous leniency was unwarranted.
Edited to warn people that that portion of my post was incorrect.
But the document paints a different picture. He cheated, and they agreed to re-enable his account if he promised to not cheat again.
According to chess.com he kept his promise. So why the sudden new ban?
I would agree with you that the initial cheating was enough for lifetime ban. But chess.com decided against it at the time.
Reconsidering their decision 2 years later without new evidence, is kind of shitty.
All of this led chess.com Fairplay staff to request that leadership re-review Hans' account, with updated analysis they provided, and to reconsider the removal of Hans' ban.
Page 58, from the text of a letter chess.com sent privately to Hans, just after they banned him:
"When I received your confession back on August 12th of 2020, in light of your age, I allowed you to create a new account with no fair play markings to continue to stream chess... For my team, however, there always remained serious concerns about how rampant your cheating was in prize events. In finalizing the field for the upcoming CGC, and based on a growing concern regarding ensuring fair play in Chess.com’s first million dollar prize event, my team did a deep review of your past history, and encouraged me to rethink my position of letting you continue to play in prize events on Chess.com. I ultimately made the decision that too much was at stake given our ongoing suspicions and past violations." [Emphasis added, 1]
This is an example of where such internal controversy is discussed.
[1]Full text of this section of the letter: "Moving on to my second point, I want to address both the reasons and timing for freezing your account and rescinding your CGC invite. For my team, however, there always remained serious concerns about how rampant your cheating was in prize events.
When I received your confession back on August 12th of 2020, in light of your age, I allowed you to create a new account with no fair play markings to continue to stream chess. You’ll remember that I worked hard to both advise you on this process and to protect you as much as I could. I would do that again for you or any young player I deemed to have lost their way and wanted to choose a better path forward.
For my team, however, there always remained serious concerns about how rampant your cheating was in prize events. As you know, we’ve closed the accounts of hundreds of titled players (including 4 of the top 100 Grandmasters who have confessed to cheating), and we carefully monitor and help all of them as they rehabilitate into participating in our events. You and I had many subsequent discussions in our Slack DMs where we openly cooperated on the right way for you to rebuild your reputation.
In finalizing the field for the upcoming CGC, and based on a growing concern regarding ensuring fair play in Chess.com’s first million dollar prize event, my team did a deep review of your past history, and encouraged me to rethink my position of letting you continue to play in prize events on Chess.com. I ultimately made the decision that too much was at stake given our ongoing suspicions and past violations.
Considering the above, we made this decision to close your account privately and uninvite you from the CGC. I regret the timing, but the timing between the Sinquefield Cup and the CGC required me to move quickly to replace your spot. I believe I acted in the best interest of the game and all participants to reconsider our invitation with so much at stake.
I’m going to bring my letter to a close with an offer to have a call. If you are willing to correct the false statements you made about having never cheated when it mattered (now that you have said these untruths publicly), acknowledge the full breadth of the above violations, and cooperate with us to compete under strict Fair Play measures, Chess.com would be happy to consider bringing you back to our events. In fact, I think it would be a wonderful redemption story for the full truth to come out, for the chess world to see this and acknowledge your talent regardless of your past, and give the community what they deserve: The truth."
Happens all the time in all kinds of fields.
Public: "So he's been cheating recently?"
Chess.com: "Oh yeah, he cheats all the time. Everyone does, really. Online chess is like 50% cheaters/bots, don't expect any real humans here, this is like 10x worse than Twitter."
So he was re-banned for absolutely no reason.
He kept his side of the deal, i.e. not cheat again on chess.com platform. Chess.com didn’t keep theirs.