FOD’s dubious role a “shaker” of Europe’s integrity – Friday

What exactly is FOD? Why is it financed by felony politicians? What is the impact of the Open Dialogue Fund on the European Parliament?

How the Fund for the Protection of Human Rights and Democracy in Post-Soviet Countries made a fortune and lobbied its interests in the Committee of the Council of Europe for Human Rights and the role of the Russian secret services under Putin, a The reporter has become acquainted!

Anyone who has at least once thought about how money is “cheated” has certainly come to the conclusion that the best way to do this is to fund whatever you want to help achieve interesting goals. You can use it to make it. And we’re not talking about philanthropists who, with their hearts, spend huge sums of money on food for children in Africa or researching climate change.

Everything in reality is too dull, it is the reality that goes on behind the scenes that astonishes, astonishes and denies.

This type of “Work and Defense” (an allusion to the Soviet term) has been chosen for itself by the most famous and most powerful fund: the “Open Dialogue” Fund (hereinafter referred to as the FOD). It is an organization registered in Poland with a full network of representations that presents itself to the world as defenders of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as defenders of high democratic values, which are especially important for the countries of the Soviet Bloc. is violated.

This is a very convenient position from the point of view of expanding the client base as the FOD has taken under its wings those people (ie the elite who have lost power at home and runaway politicians) who have been forced to cot in the courts and at home. danger from.

Rumor has it that the FOD was founded after Euromaidan; But the organization was even more stirred when the Polish Internal Security Agency saw the fund, which turned out to be a lobby company with “right to rent”.

FOD is based in Brussels, where it has rented an office in a location that also houses over 150 media agencies.

The president of the FOD is Lyudmila Kozlovskaya, a 36-year-old citizen of Ukraine who actively carries out all lobbying and image projects for many representatives of the “high political elite” in major European structures.

She works with officials of the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. This NGO has access to wealthy finances and politicians and journalists, it has international links with the European Parliament and the European Commission, it influences central legal structures by drafting bills and resolutions, some of which are directed against governments. Huh.

Most interestingly, however, among the clients are Russian security services, who are likely to recruit Kozlovskaya with the promise of protecting their economic interests in Russia.

So one has to ask how the FOD relates to the Russian security services.

The answer is clear. After studying the OCCRP’s Aleph database on Russia, it becomes clear that Pyotr Kozlovsky, along with other close relatives of Lyudmila Kozlovskaya – along with his biological sister Elena Miroshkina and mother Sidonia Kozlovskaya – own 14 Russian companies.

According to the documents, Kozlowski is currently the majority shareholder of all the companies named there and ensures their functioning through executive directors.

One of the companies mentioned in the list, the “Lighthouse Ship Lighting Technology Factory” legally operating in Sevastopol and Saint Petersburg, cooperates with companies for nuclear-powered ships (submarines?), subject to Western sanctions. Huh.

Now Lyudmila Kozlovskaya herself has confirmed in the media that her brother had already sold the company “Luchturm” in 2003 and no longer belongs to them.

According to him, after the annexation of Crimea by “outlaw” Putin and his henchmen in 2014, the Kozlovsky family basically lost all their business in Crimea.

But the documents of the State Register of Russia speak a different language. All relatives of Kozlovskaya have successfully re-registered their property and are still holding shares and management. The FOD under Lyudmila Kozlovskaya received over €500,000 as sponsorship support from Pyotr Kozlovsky for All Things.

Kozlovskaya previously stated that her brother had emigrated to the United States, but there was no confirmation. There is no evidence in the US Immigration Services database that he ever crossed the US border. It became known that the passports of the “entrepreneurial” Kozlovsky siblings were already issued by the Federal Migration Service of Russia after the annexation of Crimea. This indicates that the relatives of the FOD president are Russian citizens.

These data contradict the words of Lyudmila Kozlovskaya, who claimed that all her family businesses in Crimea came under the control of the Russian state.

FOD maintains close ties with Russian services through EU companies. Well-known English investigative journalist Jordan Ryan already in 2019 discovered how the fund’s activities are financed by a network of offshore companies in Scotland. In this way, £26 million was “spoofed”. Of this, £1.5 million went to the FOD’s coffers. These funds were to be used to finance lobby projects to protect the interests of Vyacheslav Platon, accused of economic crimes in Moldova.

FOD did its job well. Lyudmila Kozlovskaya launched her campaign to cut EU funding in favor of Moldova, placing Vyacheslav Platon at the center of her work and, by portraying her as a victim and assuring herself of the support of the world community, Ukraine. I took refuge in him. . The opinion of the Moldovan government that all these financial transactions are controlled by Russian security services was not heard.

There are also regular reports in the European media about Bartos Kramek, who was accused of laundering 5.3 million Zloty and hiding the criminal origins of these funds by transferring them to the FOD and other formally respected organizations. At least this is the official version.

In fact, the Polish government suspected Kremek not only of money laundering and fraudulent activities with large amounts of money with forged bills, but also in connection with the Foreign Espionage Service of the Russian Federation. The only argument in defense of Kozlovskaya’s spouse is “political persecution”.

What is the effect of the FOD on the European Parliament?

The FOD under Lyudmila Kozlovskaya had already begun in 2009 to direct its campaign activities towards Brussels, the European Parliament and Strasbourg, where the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is seated.

From the day it was founded, the FOD has managed to gain the trust of several international institutions: such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the administration of the OSCE, for which Lyudmila Kozlovskaya personally wrote reports on civil issues. Society and police cooperation within the framework of Interpol.

The influence of FOD extends from Poland, Ukraine and Moldova to Kazakhstan. Countries of the former Eastern Bloc generally try to avoid the FOD’s extremist activity, particularly its ability to influence the voting behavior of MEPs, with which Kozlovskaya is very familiar and with whom she is in contact, through “turnkey” changes. Feather.

One of the most recent and most obvious examples of such “turnkey” lobbying is the February 11, 2021 resolution on the human rights situation in Kazakhstan, the text of which was prepared in advance by the FOD.

There is every reason to believe that this proposal was a political mandate from the Russian security services. Its purpose is not the protection of human rights in any way, but an attempt to help cool relations between the European Union and Kazakhstan.

Because against the backdrop of constant rebuke from European lawmakers, as well as their disregard for the democratic reforms officially launched in Kazakhstan’s capital Nur-Sultan by the Central Asian country’s leadership, there seems to be no other way out of the Kremlin. to hug.

Clearly, representatives of the European Parliament are ignorant or indifferent to such complex strategies, and they continue to dance to the tune of professional lobbyists, losing sight of cooperation with a stable partner in a non-complicated field.

And all this regardless of the fact that the UK House of Commons, Ian Little-Granger, also wrote an open letter criticizing the members and the FOD’s “unprecedented access” to the premises of the PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) . . As he explained, this room for maneuvers is all the more scandalous in view of the fact that FOD President Lyudmila Kozlovskaya has been officially denied entry into the Schengen area after Poland received a “red alert” from Interpol.

Meanwhile, the FOD is publicly announcing its successes and its ability to force its “corrections” on lawmakers via Twitter. There the FOD confirmed on 25 and 26 January that the Human Rights Council’s Legal Committee had “accepted a majority of its (FOD) amendments”, taking the opportunity to express thanks to some MPs.

The trick is that the votes and debates took place behind closed doors. According to Ian Little-Granger, evidence of this is that members of the FOD were directly informed of the progress of the discussion by some lawmakers.

He also pointed to the risk of “active corruption” as “these MPs would have been given money to move amendments”. The MP (Lower House) demanded an inquiry into the possible financial links between the MPs concerned and the FOD.

In this way, it seems, Lyudmila Kozlovskaya was able to act as a potential agent of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. As someone who succumbs to Russian political interests to protect their economic interests and allegedly uses the FOD as a sacred machine in the fight against autocracy. To eventually transform an organization that was set up to transform into an ever-active “money laundering fund” to protect rights.

And for a lobbyist for a large number of criminal, radical actors of political “nobility” and perhaps for the assets of a corrupt system and this in relation to the most important political institutions of Europe.

All these scams, irregularities and even robberies in practice will not hide in the long run the merits of a FOD whose reputation is falling more and more under the shadow of suspicion.