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.