Tag: political persecution

Last year, on 13 December, the Voivodeship Administrative Court (WSA) in Warsaw ordered the Office for Foreigners to remove Lyudmyla Kozlovska from the list of undesirable people in Poland. “In 2018, after many years of residency, I was banned from entering Poland upon a  private request of Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik who controlled the […]

After almost six years of legal battles, the Voivodeship Administrative Court (VAC) ordered that the pro-democracy activist and President of the Open Dialogue Foundation be removed from the list of people not allowed into Poland. Services subordinate to the Law and Justice party considered her a threat to Poland after ODF objected to the politicisation […]

On 8 December 2023, the President of the Open Dialogue Foundation participated in the panel discussion “Regulation as an Opportunity” at the Digital Finance Summit in Brussels. Lyudmyla Kozlovska gave a presentation on the consequences of the misuse of anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulations. The event, moderated by journalist Jimmy Franklin and Toon Vanagt, CEO […]

Russia is threatened with exclusion from the international system of combating money laundering. The issue of Russia’s inclusion on the blacklist of the organisation in question – the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) – was considered at Ukraine’s request at a recent FATF session. The decision has not yet been made, but it may be […]

On 20 October 2023, the Vice-President & Executive Director of the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF) Martin Mycielski and Chair of the Supervisory Board Bartosz Kramek were hosted by member of the State Tribunal, lawyer, and attorney Jacek Dubois in an interview entitled “Rachunek za prokuratora” (“Footing the bill for a prosecutor”).  In this hour-long interview, they […]

Lyudmyla Kozlovska, President of the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF), participated in the Bitcoin Amsterdam Conference, which took place from 12 to 14 October 2023. During the panel discussion at the conference Bitcoin is borderless, she shared her story of how Bitcoin allowed her to fight for human rights, help Ukraine during the war, and deal […]

The Law and Justice (PiS) Party and Ziobro arm themselves to strike fear into entrepreneurs; to strike them not with a stick, but with a truncheon. Michał Romanowski – Professor of commercial law, Warsaw University. Attorney-at-Law at the Romanowski i Wspólnicy Law Office. In a recent interview with Forbes, Arkadiusz Muś, one of Poland’s most […]

Like every year, ODF took an active part in the OSCE’s Warsaw Human Dimension Conference. Unlike in 2022 we didn’t just focus the assembly’s attention on rule of law challenges in Poland, but also presented our findings on financial exclusion stemming from the abuse of AML/CFT laws by authoritarian states. The Warsaw Human Dimension Conference […]

The Open Dialogue Foundation and the “Themis” Association of Judges have published a report outlining how the Polish public prosecutor’s office operated under the rule of Zbigniew Ziobro. Entrepreneurs speak out about harassment by investigators. The report features a number of stories of people who experienced repression by the public prosecutor’s office in Poland under […]

Not enough trees have been felled over the last eight years in the country to print reports on the scandals and wrongdoings not addressed by the Law and Justice (PiS) government. This is what it looks like: a raid by special service officers at 6.00 in the morning, a house search, handcuffs, and then detention […]

At the beginning of the week, the Open Dialogue Foundation and the Association of Judges “Themis” (Polish: Stowarzyszenie Sędziów „Themis”) published a report that portrays the actions of the Public Prosecution Office under Zbigniew Ziobro in quite a terrible light. In this report, businessmen recount the harassment they have suffered at the hands of investigators. […]

On Monday afternoon, at a meeting marking the publication of a report, former PKP (Polish Railways) head Jakub Karnowski and entrepreneurs Piotr Osiecki and Przemyslaw Krych spoke about the investigations and repression that have befallen them in recent years at the hands of the Polish Prosecutor’s Office. They spoke not only of bogus charges, detentions […]

Together with the “Themis” Association of Judges, we are proud to present the latest version of the report on abuses of power perpetrated by the Polish public prosecutor’s office under the rule of Zbigniew Ziobro: “Selected Cases of Malicious Prosecution and Derelition of Duties“. Monday 9 October, 16:00 – there will be a live broadcast […]

Preface Since the Law and Justice (PiS)-led United Right Coalition [Composed of PiS and its two junior partners – Solidarna Polska (United Poland, led by the Justice Minister/Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro) and, until August 2021, Porozumienie Jarosława Gowina (Jarosław Gowin’s Agreement)] took power in 2015, an unprecedented politicisation of the public prosecution has occurred, which has […]

On 5 October 2023, webeconomy.info published an interview with Lyudmyla Kozlovska, President of the Open Dialogue Foundation, on solving the problem of people and NGOs excluded from the financial system. She talked about how Bitcoin has become a tool for defending human rights, delivering humanitarian aid and surviving in the face of political persecution. It […]