On June 26, 2025, Lyudmila Kozlovska, head of the Belgium-based NGO Open Dialogue Foundation, testified before the U.S. Congress’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. She cited a defamation lawsuit filed by Kyrgyzstan’s Bakai Bank against her organization as an example of “transnational repression.”
A Belgian court has since cast serious doubt on that claim and, in the process, revealed a broader problem.
The case began with a series of publications in 2023 in which the Open Dialogue Foundation accused Bakai Bank of helping Russia bypass international sanctions. The group suggested the bank itself should face sanctions.
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But in Brussels, the court saw it differently. It found that the organization had made serious allegations without a sufficient factual basis, relying on unverified sources and damaging the bank’s reputation.
The court acknowledged that NGOs play an important watchdog role. At the same time, it drew a clear line. Even in matters of public interest, claims must be backed by verified facts.
To correct the record, the court ordered Open Dialogue Foundation to remove all materials related to Bakai Bank and publish the full judgment prominently on its website homepage for 30 days or face fines of €10,000 per day. It also rejected the group’s argument that the lawsuit was a SLAPP, finding no evidence that the case was abusive.
That is not repression. It is accountability.
The gap between those two narratives should concern anyone who cares about the credibility of U.S. institutions.
This is not just a dispute between a bank and an NGO. It shows how some European advocacy groups have learned to work the American political system. They export contested claims, repackage them as human rights violations, and present them in Washington as if they were established facts.
The pattern is becoming familiar.
An NGO publishes allegations tied to sanctions, corruption, or financial misconduct, often based on limited or secondary sources. When those claims are challenged, the dispute is reframed as political persecution. Then comes the next step. Congressional briefings, human rights panels, and outreach to policymakers in Washington. By that point, the claims are no longer presented as allegations but as conclusions.
By the time a court weighs in, the narrative has already taken hold.
The Open Dialogue Foundation case is especially telling because the court directly rejected one of the most common defenses used by advocacy groups today. The claim that any legal action against them is an attempt to silence criticism. In this case, the judges found no such abuse. Instead, they concluded that the foundation had crossed the line by making claims it could not properly support.
In other words, the system worked.
But that conclusion came after the same case had already been presented to members of Congress as evidence of repression.
This kind of narrative laundering is not unique to one organization. Across Europe, advocacy networks have promoted the causes of controversial figures by recasting legal or financial disputes as human rights struggles. The Open Dialogue Foundation itself has faced scrutiny over its ties to Mukhtar Ablyazov, a fugitive Kazakh oligarch accused of embezzling $7 billions, who has been fined by the U.S. court for $218 million for his dubious financial schemes.
Washington has become a key arena in this process.
The United States offers something no other platform can match. Credibility. A mention in a congressional forum can quickly elevate a disputed claim into an accepted narrative. For policymakers dealing with complex international issues, there is a natural tendency to trust information framed in the language of human rights.
That trust can be misplaced.
When U.S. institutions amplify claims that later fall apart in court, the damage is not limited to the parties involved. It also weakens the credibility of the human rights system itself.
None of this is to argue that NGOs are not essential. They are. Legitimate watchdogs play a vital role in exposing corruption and defending civil liberties.
But credibility depends on standards.
If advocacy groups want to be taken seriously in Washington, they need to meet the same basic test that courts apply. Serious accusations require serious evidence. When that standard is ignored, and when groups look abroad for validation instead of proving their case at home, the line between advocacy and manipulation begins to blur.
The Brussels ruling should be a warning.
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Congress and other U.S. institutions need to take a harder look at the claims they are asked to endorse, especially when those claims come from complex foreign disputes. Otherwise, they risk being drawn into campaigns driven less by human rights concerns than by narrative strategy.
Kozlovska’s testimony was meant to highlight repression. Instead, it points to a different problem. One rooted not in Central Asia, but in how some European NGOs have learned to use Washington to their advantage.
Duggan Flanakin is a CFACT policy analyst.
