Tag: civil society

On 7 August 2023, our colleague, volunteer and employee Borys Stankiewicz suffered a stroke and was taken to the Dr W. Roefler Railway Hospital in Pruszków. Immediate medical treatment significantly reduced the consequences of the stroke, although it did not prevent everything. Boris has facial and arm paresis, and his cognitive abilities are restricted. The […]

Borys has earned a reputation as a man with a big heart and a veteran “streetfighter” for the rule of law, democracy and human rights. Today he needs our support. On 7 August, Borys Stankiewicz suffered a stroke and was taken to the Dr W. Roefler Railway Hospital in Pruszków. Immediate medical treatment significantly reduced […]

The EU has become one of the first jurisdictions to introduce comprehensive regulations on crypto-assets. Ukraine has announced its ambition to become a “pioneer” in implementing the European version of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA. As the third country in the world in terms of cryptocurrency usage, Ukraine has been working on the regulation […]

Members of the European Parliament have voted on the first regulatory framework that will directly affect cryptocurrencies. The Czech Pirate Party opposed the proposal, claiming that it would lead to mandatory registration or identification of cryptocurrency owners. This will pose a problem, for example, for the funding of dissidents such as Russian opposition figure Alexei […]

On 17 and 18 April 2023, a delegation led by the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF) conducted an advocacy mission to Rome to raise awareness on the abuse of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Financing of Terrorism (CFT) rules perpetrated by authoritarian regimes as a tool for transnational repression, and to expose how Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan […]

On Wednesday 22 March 2023, the Chamber of Deputies of Italy, held a hearing regarding the activities of the Bank of Italy.  Among others, Governor Ignazio Visco talked about the recent development regarding AML/CFT regulation. In 2022, for example, the Anti-Money Laundering Supervision and Regulation Unit was established to monitor AML compliance of financial intermediaries […]

Joint submission of the civil society coalition regarding the Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing Can the EU’s anti-money laundering reform help dictators? As the European Union gets closer to adopting […]

The Open Dialogue Foundation and MP Constantinos Efstathiou (Cyprus, SOC) organise a side event at the upcoming session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 26 January 2023. The discussion titled Misuse of the Anti-Money Laundering Measures (AML) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) regulations as a tool of transnational repression will take place in Room 3 at the premises of Palais de l’Europe (the headquarter of the Council of Europe) at 1 p.m. in Strasbourg.

On 20–21 October 2022, the Plan ₿ Forum explored the theme of financial freedom facilitated by Bitcoin in the Swiss city of Lugano. Lyudmyla Kozlovska, the President of the Open Dialogue Foundation, actively participated in a panel discussion during the event. The panel, moderated by Farida Nabourema, Executive Director of the Togolese Civil League, also […]

In the weeks of 26 September – 7 October the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and its Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) held its 2022 Warsaw Human Dimension Conference, serving as a summit, or plenary session, of the OSCE’s human rights institution. The conference was attended by OSCE […]

We firmly oppose the spread of false information related to the activities of the Open Dialogue Foundation for Ukraine. These allegations have been spread in recent weeks by one of our former colleagues, who ended his cooperation with the Foundation at the end of June this year. Unfortunately, we are unable to respond to them […]

The Open Dialogue Foundation and 57 other NGOs urge the U.S. Congress to address Russian crimes in Ukraine by supporting a robust reauthorisation of the Global Magnitsky Act of 2016. On 23 March 2022, a number of nongovernmental organisations wrote to leaders in the United States Congress urging a reauthorisation of the Global Magnitsky Human […]

The appeal was published on March 14 https://zmina.ua/statements/mizhnarodni-struktury-mayut-zahystyty-ukrayincziv-vid-vykraden-ta-strat-gromadskist/ Official addresses of the institutions to which we appeal:[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]@[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]  APPEAL to the international community on abductions and executions of Ukrainian activists, journalists, and local government officials in Russian-occupied territories We, representatives of Ukrainian NGOs, appeal to the international community in connection with the abductions and executions […]

On 3 September 2021, within the framework of the Eastern Economic Forum, Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Askar Mamin and head of the Russian SBER group of companies (SBER) German Gref [German Gref, the head of SBER, has been close to Putin since his work in St-Petersburg. Gref was mentioned in the Pandora papers scandal with his offshores in Singapore, Panama and Samoa] signed a Memorandum of Cooperation on Digital Transformation Projects for the Republic of Kazakhstan, Transition to the Platform-Based Digitalisation Model and the Data Driven Government Concept. The Memorandum was approved by the Decree of the Government of Kazakhstan on the same day. Pursuant to the Memorandum, SBER will create, implement and support a single centralised digital platform (GovTech) for all electronic state services in Kazakhstan to replace Kazakhstan’s existing e-government platforms (united by the website – https://egov.kz/cms/en). As of today, over 80% of state services are available on egov.kz. 

Since the Law and Justice (PiS)-led United Right coalition (composed of PiS and its two minor partners – Solidarna Polska and Porozumienie) took power in 2015, we have witnessed an unprecedented level of politicization of the public prosecution service that has been transformed into a tool serving political and personal interests of the ruling camp and its members. This resulted in a growing number of politically motivated cases of investigations carried out against those regarded as opponents of the government. The continuous changes to the criminal justice system (Criminal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, Law on the Prosecutor’s Service) expand the powers of the prosecution, amplifying the so-called inequality of arms between the sides of the criminal proceedings and a general repressiveness of the system.