George and Amal Clooney’s charity foundation has been banned in Russia following allegations it used “Hollywood-scale activities” to “discredit” the country.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice, founded by the actor and human rights lawyer, has been classified as “undesirable” by the Moscow authorities.
In a statement, Kremlin prosecutors said: “Under the guise of humanitarian ideas, these ‘warriors for justice’… have promoted criminal investigations against the highest Russian authorities.”
This comes just three months after the foundation’s legal adviser, Anna Neistat, suggested the foundation wanted the West to go after “Russian propagandists.”
At the time, the Kremlin claimed the foundation was on a “judicial safari against Russian journalists,” which Clooney denied.
George and Amal Clooney’s (pictured in 2022) charity foundation has been banned in Russia following allegations it used “Hollywood-scale activities” to “discredit” the country.
In a statement, Kremlin prosecutors said: “Under the pretext of humanitarian ideas, these ‘warriors of justice’… have promoted criminal investigations against the highest Russian authorities.” Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 19
Prosecutors also mocked Clooney’s record as a human rights lawyer known for handling high-profile cases, including the ISIS genocide of the Yazidis, as “someone who considers herself an international law attorney.”
Clooney distanced himself from Neistat’s comments, saying “someone at our foundation made a mistake,” before adding that “we at the Clooney Foundation would never go after journalists, even if we disagree with them.”
Russia’s law on “undesirable organizations” had been dormant for most of the past decade before the Kremlin began using it to essentially outlaw its opponents and expel them from the country.
American think tanks and Russian media outlets in exile, such as the Dozhd TV channel, have previously been labelled “undesirable”.
The “undesirable” status has had particularly painful implications for media outlets such as the news website Meduza, which stopped offering subscriptions to Russian residents and crowdfunding in Russia.
This was because Kremlin repression meant that a simple money transfer could land a donor in prison.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice does not have an office located in Russia.
Andrei Pivovarov, one of the Russians freed earlier this month in a prisoner swap between Russia and the United States, was serving a four-year sentence after working for an “undesirable organization.”
He worked for an NGO founded by opposition activist Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a businessman who was Russia’s richest man in 2003 but is now exiled and living in London.
