"Where the curators will say": a new clone of FBK In Europe, it lobbies for anti-Russian sanctions on Khodorkovsky's money

Highlights: "Where the curators will say": a new clone of FBK In Europe, it lobbies for anti-Russian sanctions on Khodorkovsky's money. The FBK branch in Europe and the main sponsor of ACFE are run by the same people who manage its other structures. According to experts, the organization has no political weight in the public field, but through it decisions taken behind the scenes by the governments of unfriendly countries are legalized. In 2022, the Lithuanian Anti-Corruption Foundation Europe received an income of €2.24 million, the company's annual budget was €5 million.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation* has a new clone in the European Union to lobby for anti-Russian sanctions - Anti-Corruption Foundation Europe (ACFE) in Vilnius. As RT found out from the database of legal entities in Lithuania, in 2022, €2.24 million passed through this company. At the same time, the company reported to the European Parliament on a budget of €5 million. A detailed analysis of the facts indicates that Mikhail Khodorkovsky is sponsoring the clone**: the FBK branch in Europe and the main sponsor of ACFE are run by the same people who manage its other structures. According to experts, the organization has no political weight in the public field, but through it decisions taken behind the scenes by the governments of unfriendly countries are legalized.

"How to accelerate the imposition of sanctions against Putin's accomplices", "How to appeal to members of the European Parliament", "How to achieve the speedy imposition of sanctions - instructions for residents of the United States and Great Britain" - publications with such headlines appear on the website of the FBK, which has changed its symbols and branding, for more than a year. Since the beginning of the NWO, the fund has been redesigned into a workshop for preparing complaints to the highest authorities of the European Union and the United States in order to impose sanctions against Russia.

Initially, the work was carried out through the American clone of FBK, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which was opened in 2021, which was led by former FBK managers, Alexei Navalny***'s closest associates. Now the opposition has opened a branch of FBK in Europe, which spends the equivalent of 362 million rubles on lobbying for sanctions in the European Parliament.

Proprietary cloning

In June 2021, the Future Russia Foundation (FRF) was registered in Vilnius. It was named in the same way as the other two companies of the founder of Yukos and the Open Russia movement, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It was led by a Lithuanian citizen Irena Lapinskine, who participated in other projects of the oligarch.

What this organization does, RT described in detail in one of its investigations. After the start of the NWO and the closure of Khodorkovsky's main European media hub, Open Press, it was FRF that took over the production and distribution of media content, mainly in video format.

In a few months of 2022, 73 people from previous MBH projects moved to Lithuania. In Russia, they feared criminal prosecution after recognizing a number of projects as undesirable organizations, and in Vilnius they freely continued to criticize the goals and objectives of the NWO and publish materials discrediting the Russian army, sometimes revealing the deployment of Russian formations.

But in February 2023, the organization was renamed the Anti-Corruption Foundation Europe (ACFE).

The ACFE then registered with the European Parliament's Lobbyist Transparency Register. It is a database of organisations, associations, groups and individuals who "carry out activities aimed at influencing EU policy" and decision-making, while acting in the interests of third parties. The portal "Verdict" was the first to draw attention to this.

From the documents published in the register, it becomes clear that Khodorkovsky's structures have finally merged with the structures of the FBK. In the report of the European Commission, ACFE indicated that it is affiliated with the main company of FBK - the Massachusetts Anti-Corruption Foundation *****.

Alexander Pomazuev is responsible for contacts with EU officials on behalf of the organization, according to the documents. This is a lawyer from the Navalny team who represented the interests of FBK in all high-profile civil and administrative proceedings in Russia.

Tendency to overestimate

The main goals of the Lithuanian ACFE are to escalate sanctions against Russia and its politicians. This is expressly stated in the prospectus.

"The introduction of restrictive measures of the European Union against persons involved in the establishment of an authoritarian regime in the Russian Federation, violation of human rights, corruption, unleashing a war of aggression against Ukraine," the section "Legislative Initiatives" in the transparency register says.

In 2022, the Lithuanian Anti-Corruption Foundation Europe received an income of €2.24 million, the organization provided this data to Lithuanian government agencies, RT learned from the local register of legal entities.

ACFE also reported to the European Commission by submitting information about its annual budget to the transparency register. True, she indicated completely different figures there. According to data published in the EU Transparency Register, the company's annual budget was €5 million.

Experts do not exclude the fact of deliberate distortion of the reporting of the European branch of FBK.

"There has always been a shadow budget, this is in their tradition," says social activist Vitaly Serukanov, a researcher of the opposition field in Russia. - Let's take the practice of FBK in Moscow: they submitted a report with some figures, but in fact the real expenses were different. In Europe, apparently, this is more difficult, and somewhere in public reports, budgets begin to intersect, not to fight together.

Political scientist, director of the International Institute of the Newest States Alexei Martynov says that he is not surprised by the discrepancy in the data in the reports.

"They always have something at odds," says the expert. "I don't know if there will be public hearings or if everything will be resolved quietly, but one thing is clear: in the European bureaucratic space, violation of financial discipline is a serious misconduct."

Also on the russian.rt.com "I felt where the wind was blowing": how Kasparov received $ 644 thousand to save American democracy

Money transit

Of the total budget, €500,<> was received from the monetization of the YouTube channel. Another indirect confirmation of the distortion: in the report to the Lithuanian authorities, there is no separate column for advertising revenues.

The remaining €4.5 million came from the Lithuanian company Posterum. RT wrote about it: this is another company from Khodorkovsky's cage, which produces the YouTube channel "Navalny. Live». In 2021, Posterum received $474 thousand for this from the head legal entity FBK from the United States.

"The direct management of the YouTube channel is supervised by Posterum, the content is provided by the Anti-Corruption Foundation together with Posterum," the report of the American FBK says. "Posterum has partnered with the Anti-Corruption Foundation to create materials that promote the rule of law and a free and democratic society in Russia."

RT commissioned the annual report of Posterum. It turned out that € 4.5 million does not appear in the statements of Posterum, after all, for the whole year, according to the Lithuanian register of legal entities, € 4.18 million passed through the company's accounts.

Based on the personalities of the directors of Lithuanian firms and the connection between Khodorkovsky and Lithuanian companies previously proven by RT, it can be argued that the money for lobbying was allocated by Khodorkovsky's structures. We have already written that since the beginning of the CBO, grants from the MBH have been centrally distributed by its financial attorney, Lithuanian Kristjonas Kuchinskas.

Also on the russian.rt.com "Network of firms in the USA and Europe": in 2022, Khodorkovsky's structures spent $21 million on opposition activity

Khodorkovsky has long been a source of money for the Russian opposition, Martynov said.

"Khodorkovsky will not spend his money on this," the expert said. - I assume that its funds perform a transit function. Where the curators say, there he will send money.

Indeed, back in 2015, the MBH structures paid 40 million rubles to the PARNAS party and paid for two FBK "studies" worth $ 30 thousand each. The company distributing the funds was run by Kučinskas.

In 2022, at least $4 million passed through Khodorkovsky's structures from the State Department and American funds intended to finance the Russian opposition in exile.

Carpet intrigues

The financial data found by RT and Verdict refute the opposition's concept of their relationship. After all, in public, Khodorkovsky and his associates Navalny only swear.

In April, Navalny said he was "ashamed of Khodorkovsky," who hires former officials. Earlier, the FBK defiantly ignored the opposition congress convened by Khodorkovsky in Berlin. In August, one of the leaders of the FBK, Leonid Volkov******, called Khodorkovsky a scoundrel because the latter did not believe that Navalny personally wrote lengthy public appeals from prison.

However, it follows from the reports that the new main sponsor of the Anti-Corruption Foundation is Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

As RT wrote earlier, Khodorkovsky and his people began to actively sponsor the "international FBK" after businessman Boris Zimin, the son of the founder of VimpelCom (Beeline brand) Dmitry Zimin, stopped doing this. It was Zimin Jr. who gave Navalny and the company 70 million rubles a year, forming the lion's share of the budget.

But then Zimin switched to his own financial problems. Due to the purchase of a yacht, helicopter and real estate in Britain, Bulgaria and Cyprus, as well as unprofitable investments in the hotel business, Zimin Jr. lost more than half of his father's fortune.

The baton was taken over by Khodorkovsky. Last summer, RT published documentary evidence that in 2022, Khodorkovsky's foundations allocated $16.8 million in grants to Russian émigrés and oppositionists, including the FBK.

Also on the russian.rt.com "Soldiers of Information Wars": journalist-foreign agent Yulia Latynina earned € 220 thousand on the anti-Russian agenda in a year.

We have consistently argued that money is allocated to Navalny supporters by former top managers of Yukos and members of the so-called anti-war committee founded by Khodorkovsky.

And recently, the portal "Verdict" found out that the proceeds from the sale of FBK merchandise are received by another company associated with Khodorkovsky. In 2022, the Lithuanian Magna Futura, headed by the same Khodorkovsky protégé Irena Lapinskinė, earned €170 thousand from the sale of T-shirts and hoodies "Freedom Navalny!".

Cooperation on knives

Experts differ in their assessments of the relationship between MBH and FBK. Someone calls public skirmishes ostentatious, others note that there have always been disagreements between Khodorkovsky's people and Navalny, and now they are forced to interact because they are bound by common obligations to Western curators.

Organizations publicly dissociate themselves from each other so as not to create reputational risks and not to create tension between groups of supporters, Ivan Solovyov, Honored Lawyer of Russia, explained to RT.

Vitaly Serukanov notes that MBKh and FBK have always been on knives.

"Back in Russia, when they created the 'democratic coalition', there was the same thing - serious contradictions on a personal level," Serukanov said. "But there was a common umbrella budget, which then spread into separate cells, and common curators."

Even then, the expert continues, the chief of staff of Navalny Leonid Volkov and Khodorkovsky had serious disagreements about the political course and methods of spending budgets.

"I know for sure that since April 2015, Khodorkovsky and Volkov have had a disgusting relationship," Serukanov recalls. - Volkov always felt competition in Khodorkovsky, despite the fact that FBK was financially involved in his projects. Volkov spoke about Khodorkovsky behind the scenes and behind the scenes quite radically: he called him a fraud who was unable to build a structure.

Vitaly Serukanov calls the current situation "forced technical interaction".

"Khodorkovsky's structures are used because they already have everything in place in Europe," Serukanov says. - Khodorkovsky, gritting his teeth, allows all this to pass through his firms. And none of the parties, for technical and personal reasons, can refuse this interaction. Because then the people who lead and supervise this whole story - Western funds - will be dissatisfied.

Packaging for special services

FBK has created and is actively promoting its project "List of 6000". This is the name of an online table with data from 6 thousand Russians: politicians, businessmen, journalists, actors. Now there are almost 7 thousand names. For their patriotic position, the FBK considers these people to be "Putin's accomplices" and demands that sanctions be imposed on everyone.

True, it is not possible for everyone to document the grounds for inclusion in the list.

The European Union has officially included in its ninth package of sanctions only 87 names from the "6000 list" of the FBK.

According to the opposition on its website, it was allegedly thanks to the activity of the FBK that the EU imposed sanctions on Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Tatyana Golikova, State Duma deputy Valentina Tereshkova, singer Oleg Gazmanov, philosopher Dmitry Dugin, CEC Chairman Ella Pamfilova and many others. Of the recent initiatives - FBK demands to impose sanctions on the soloist of the group "Beasts" Roman Bilyk.

Meanwhile, the project has no real political weight, says Vitaly Serukanov, who himself was included in the "6000 List" for exposing the destructive initiatives of the FBK.

The "6000 List" is an absolutely exaggerated project. It was created in order to promote the interests of FBK, the expert believes. - They had a certain budget allocated for the creation of a large list. But these lists were compiled in a hurry, very incorrectly. People were included there without evidence, just for the volume, in order to close the planned number and justify the budgets spent.

Also on the russian.rt.com "The Last Tour": experts on the new trial of Navalny and the future of his associates

The FBK, Serukanov believes, hoped that they would make a splash and European governments would pay attention to them again.

"But the bureaucrats from Brussels said: be kind enough to legally justify each position," the expert explained. "And then there was a stupor, because FBK cannot carry out this work either technically or physically."

Under the guise of expertise

Regulation of lobbying activities in the United States and the European Union implies the declaration of sources of income. Therefore, the FBK was forced to register in the register of information disclosure, says Marat Bashirov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics and an expert on international sanctions.

"In the EU, sanctions are adopted and lifted only by unanimous decision," explained Bashirov, who heads the Center for the Study of the Problems of International Sanctions Regimes. "This is their difference from the American system, where everything depends on the mandate of the Ministry of Finance, that is, in fact, the signatures of one person."

The collective procedure, says Bashirov, implies the presence of an expert opinion. And the people who work in the FBK are trying to act as experts who say that this particular person is "worthy" of being included in the sanctions, and somehow argue this.

"To legalize this decision, they also hold personal meetings with members of the European Parliament, a kind of conference, where they introduce themselves as experts on Russia," says Bashirov. "But, of course, they don't have any independence."

The initial sources of sanctions decisions are embassies, Western analytical centers, which collect data from open sources (OSINT) and intelligence work within the framework of the program, the expert continues.

"Undoubtedly, this organization has long been a shell of Western intelligence services, which actually legalizes the decisions that are made by these services," he concludes. - In fact, FBK packs the information that is provided to it in a beautiful wrapper. A CIA agent can't sign a sanctions paper on his own behalf."

* The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) is included in the register of NGOs performing the functions of a foreign agent, according to the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation dated 09.10.2019. The organization is recognized as extremist, its activities are banned by the decision of the Moscow City Court of 09.06.2021.

** Included in the register of individuals performing the functions of a foreign agent by decision of the Ministry of Justice of Russia dated 20/05/2022.

Included in the register of individuals involved in terrorism and extremism.

"Open Russia Civic Movement, Open Russia" is an organization whose activities are recognized as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation by the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office of 26/04/2017.

Anti-Corruption Foundation International, Inc was included in the list of NGOs whose activities were recognized as undesirable in the Russian Federation by the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office dated May 22, 2023. The organization was included in the register of foreign agents on December 23, 2022.

Included in the register of individuals performing the functions of a foreign agent, by decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation dated 22/04/2022.