Institute for European Integrity Launches NGO Watchlist

The Insti­tute for Euro­pean Integri­ty (IEI), an NGO mon­i­tor­ing influ­ence orga­ni­za­tions, has launched its NGO watch­list iden­ti­fy­ing “sus­pi­cious, high-risk, crim­i­nal­ly-linked, or sanc­tioned NGOs.” Accord­ing to the IEI announcement

Octo­ber 21, 2022 Today, the Insti­tute for Euro­pean Integri­ty (IEI) launched its flag­ship NGO Watch­list. The Watch­list iden­ti­fies sus­pi­cious, high-risk, crim­i­nal­ly-linked, or sanc­tioned NGOs and inves­ti­gates their fun­ders and links to gov­ern­ment influ­ence. The orga­ni­za­tions placed on the Watch­list are iden­ti­fied as hav­ing deep involve­ment with or fund­ing from an indi­vid­ual or enti­ty that has been crim­i­nal­ly pros­e­cut­ed or sanc­tioned (Rus­sia-invoked sanc­tions are exclud­ed). Addi­tion­al­ly, a sep­a­rate cat­e­go­ry of watch­list­ed NGOs includes those with strong links to indi­vid­u­als with crim­i­nal alle­ga­tions lev­elled by a Euro­pean, EU, US, or UK gov­ern­ment authority.

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Two NGOs on the ini­tial Watch­list are fea­tured in Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ing. The St. Basil, the Great Foun­da­tion, is described by the Watch­list as follows:

The St. Basil the Great Foun­da­tion was estab­lished by sanc­tioned oli­garch Kon­stan­tin Mal­ofeev in 2007. Sup­pos­ed­ly one of the largest Ortho­dox char­i­ties in Rus­sia, St. Basil has lob­bied for var­i­ous “tra­di­tion­al­ist” caus­es in and out­side of the coun­try as well as hav­ing built a school with reli­gious and tsarist fla­vor. Although there has been some turnover in terms of lead­er­ship, the main core of St. Basil has, more or less, remained intact since at least 2012. While the foun­da­tion may remain a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion inside of Rus­sia, its incep­tion and inter­na­tion­al activ­i­ty remain a well­spring of con­tro­ver­sy as it is 1: found­ed by a well-known sanc­tioned Russ­ian oli­garch; 2: part of an anti-west­ern con­spir­a­cy the­ol­o­gy (Ortho­dox vs. Deca­dent West); and 3: behav­ior con­sis­tent with attempt­ing to white­wash back­grounds as well as laun­der­ing nar­ra­tives. There are four indi­vid­u­als that are worth illu­mi­nat­ing with­in the orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship struc­ture: Kon­stan­tin Mal­ofeev, Michael Yaku­shev, Father Tikhon, and Alex­ey Komov. Present­ly sanc­tioned by the EU, UK & US, Kon­stan­tin Mal­ofeev (a/k/a the “Ortho­dox Oli­garch”) serves as the Founder of St. Basil. In addi­tion to serv­ing as the founder, he pos­sess­es 50%+ own­er­ship of the fol­low­ing enti­ties: St. Basil, Safe Inter­net League, Mar­shall Cap­i­tal Part­ners, Tsar­grad Con­glom­er­ate, and Gilroy Trad­ing Company.

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The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed this week that St. Basil the Great Foun­da­tion founder Kon­stan­tin Mal­ofeyev had cho­sen one of two MEPs from Marine Le Pen’s Rassem­ble­ment Nation­al par­ty to par­tic­i­pate in a secret project called “Alt­In­tern,” intend­ed to pro­mote val­ues such as “Chris­ten­dom as the foun­da­tion of life” and mar­riage as “the union of a man and a woman.” In March 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed on leaked emails and doc­u­ments that showed how the Russ­ian influ­ence group known as Tsar­grad was coop­er­at­ing with senior far-right politi­cians in Italy, France, Ger­many, and Aus­tria. As that post detailed, Tsar­grad is fund­ed by Mal­ofeyev (aka Mal­ofeev), known by US intel­li­gence as the Russ­ian Pres­i­den­t’s “right arm for oper­a­tions of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in Europe,” and des­ig­nat­ed by the US in 2014 over his inter­fer­ence in Ukraine. A recent UK media pro­file of Mal­ofeyev describes him and his role in fund­ing anti-abor­tion, anti-LGB­TIQ initiatives,

The IEI Watch­list describes The Insti­tute of Democ­ra­cy and Coop­er­a­tion in Paris as follows:

The Insti­tute of Democ­ra­cy and Coop­er­a­tion in Paris, here­inafter “IDCP” or “IDC”, was found­ed in 2008 by Russ­ian attor­ney Ana­toliy Kucher­e­na. In addi­tion to hav­ing pur­port­ed­ly act­ed as Putin’s dov­eren­noe lit­so (trust­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive) dur­ing the 2012 and 2018 Russ­ian pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, Mr. Kucher­e­na has han­dled high-pro­file cas­es rel­e­vant to the Krem­lin such as for­mer NSA con­trac­tor turned Russ­ian cit­i­zen Edward Snow­den and Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent-turned-fugi­tive Vik­tor Yanukovych. Adding to his many achieve­ments, the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Agency on Cor­rup­tion Pre­ven­tion has char­ac­ter­ized IDCP’s founder as a high-lev­el indi­vid­ual who works with­in enti­ties that are “…pro­vid­ing finan­cial sup­port to actions that under­mine Ukraine’s secu­ri­ty, sov­er­eign­ty, and inde­pen­dence.” IDCP as a com­bined orga­ni­za­tion­al whole has main­tained lim­it­ed staff. What it lacks in terms of man­pow­er is alle­vi­at­ed by the milieu it traf­fics in with oth­er pro-Krem­lin orga­ni­za­tions. More­over, these net­works tend to share, as well as recy­cle, senior lead­er­ship yield­ing a con­ver­gence on numer­ous issues. IDCP presents a vari­ety of con­cern­ing issues such as the fol­low­ing: 1: undis­closed gov­ern­ment sup­port; 2: senior lead­er­ship pos­sess­ing close links to ultra­na­tion­al­ists; and 3: par­tic­i­pa­tion in well-known dis­in­for­ma­tion media ecosys­tems and serv­ing as a fake observ­er for biased elec­tions. In addi­tion to its undis­closed fund­ing sources, IDCP appears to oper­ate pre­dom­i­nant­ly as a two-per­son team involv­ing the fol­low­ing indi­vid­u­als: at its helm is Direc­tor Natalia Narochnit­skaya, while John Laugh­land fills the role of Direc­tor of Studies.

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The GIOR  has report­ed ear­li­er that IDC Direc­tor of Stud­ies John Laugh­land is a British nation­al and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist with close ties to Rus­sia who recent­ly spoke at this year’s open­ing of the Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium (MCC), a Hun­gar­i­an edu­ca­tion facil­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with the gov­ern­ment of Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán, Rus­si­a’s clos­est part­ner in the EU. Aside from his role at the MCC, Laugh­land is direc­tor of the Forum for Democ­ra­cy Inter­na­tion­al, an arm of the Dutch far-right, pop­ulist polit­i­cal par­ty known as the FvD. In July of this year, the GIOR report­ed that Laugh­land was sched­uled to deliv­er a keynote at a pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da event spon­sored by the FvD, where the Russ­ian ambas­sador to the Nether­lands was expect­ed to par­tic­i­pate. In Octo­ber, we report­ed on an arti­cle writ­ten by Laugh­land attempt­ing to cast doubt on the idea that the Rus­sians were like­ly behind the recent sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage of the Nord­stream 2 gas pipelines and redi­rect blame onto the Unit­ed States.