More questions about controversial Poland-based NGO

The Sunday Times article, entitled An Edinburgh flat, a human rights activist and the oligarchs’ ‘dirty money’, has “exposed claims that Scottish companies were used to launder cash through ODF (Open Dialog Foundation), run by Ukrainian citizen Lyudmyla Kozlovska, to fund a secret lobbying campaign” on behalf of Kazakh fugitive oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov and Veaceslav Platon, the eutoday.net website reported.

Platon, according to the website, is a Moldovan businessman who was jailed in 2017 for money-laundering and fraud linked to the disappearance of USD 1 billion from Moldova’s banking system several years earlier, causing a political crisis in that country.

According to eutoday.net, a Moldovan parliament commission report has claimed that Platon has funded Kozlovska, also suggesting that Ablyazov is another source of funding.

Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) has been investigating the activities of the Open Dialogue Foundation, which has reportedly called for the conservative government in Warsaw to be overthrown.

Kozlovska was last August banned from entering Poland and the European Union.

Kozlovska is an accredited lobbyist at the European Parliament, where she has enjoyed support from deputies such as Guy Verhofstadt and several British Labour MEPs, eutoday.net reported.

The website added that one of the British MEPs signed a letter, at Kozlovska’s behest, calling on Interpol to cancel its Red Notice on Ablyazov.

“Questions asked at the time about whether or not MEPs were paid for such interventions are likely to be re-opened in the light of The Sunday Times revelations,” eutoday.net said.

(pk/gs)

Source: thetimes.co.uk/eutoday.net