Brussels court rules against Open Dialogue Foundation in Bakai Bank defamation case

A Brussels court has dealt a sig­nif­i­cant blow to the Polish – Belgian NGO Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF), rul­ing in favour of Kyrgyzstan’s Bakai Bank in a defama­tion case over alle­ga­tions link­ing the lender to sanc­tions eva­sion for Russia.

The French-speak­ing Enterprise Court of Brussels found that ODF’s claims, pub­lished in 2023 and sug­gest­ing the bank’s involve­ment in schemes to cir­cum­vent inter­na­tion­al finan­cial sanc­tions against Russia, were insuf­fi­cient­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed and unlaw­ful­ly dam­ag­ing to the bank’s reputation.

Bakai Bank, one of Kyrgyzstan’s largest lenders, had reject­ed the accu­sa­tions and launched legal action in 2024, argu­ing that the NGO’s pub­li­ca­tions crossed the line from advo­ca­cy into denigration.

The court agreed.

In a key find­ing, it ruled that ODF qual­i­fies as an “enter­prise” under Belgian eco­nom­ic law, mean­ing it can be held liable for dam­ag­ing state­ments about oth­er enti­ties. This allowed judges to apply strict rules pro­hibit­ing denigration.

On the sub­stance, the court con­clud­ed that ODF had made seri­ous, tar­get­ed alle­ga­tions with­out pro­vid­ing a sol­id fac­tu­al basis, rely­ing on sec­ondary and unver­i­fied sources rather than con­crete evidence.

While acknowl­edg­ing that NGOs play a vital “watch­dog” role, the court made clear that free­dom of expres­sion has lim­its, espe­cial­ly when accu­sa­tions risk harm­ing a spe­cif­ic institution.

“Even in mat­ters of pub­lic inter­est,” the rul­ing stressed, claims must be backed by suf­fi­cient­ly ver­i­fied facts.

The judges said this was nec­es­sary to cor­rect the pub­lic record and ensure read­ers under­stand that the alle­ga­tions against Bakai Bank were not ade­quate­ly supported.

Instead of award­ing sub­stan­tial dam­ages, the court imposed a rep­u­ta­tion­al rem­e­dy, requir­ing ODF to pub­lish the full judg­ment promi­nent­ly at the top of its home­page for 30 days, with­out com­ment, fail­ing which it will incur fines of €10,000 per day.

The court also dis­missed ODF’s attempt to por­tray the case as a SLAPP (strate­gic lit­i­ga­tion aimed at silenc­ing crit­i­cism) find­ing no evi­dence that the law­suit was abusive.

The rul­ing rais­es broad­er ques­tions about the stan­dards applied by advo­ca­cy groups oper­at­ing in polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive areas such as sanc­tions enforce­ment and finan­cial transparency.

It also adds to a grow­ing list of con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the Open Dialogue Foundation.

In June 2025, ODF pres­i­dent Lyudmyla Kozlovska pre­sent­ed the case before the U.S. Congress’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission as an exam­ple of alleged transna­tion­al repres­sion — a claim now under­mined by the Brussels ruling.

More recent­ly, in February 2026, the NGO found itself at the cen­tre of a polit­i­cal storm in Poland. A lead­ing YouTube chan­nel, Kanal Zero, accused it of being involved in a coor­di­nat­ed smear cam­paign aimed at dis­cred­it­ing inde­pen­dent media, alleged­ly in coor­di­na­tion with fig­ures linked to Prime Minister Donald Tusk. 

The foun­da­tion denied the allegations.

The organ­i­sa­tion has also faced scruti­ny in pre­vi­ous years. Multiple inter­na­tion­al media out­lets have accused ODF of lob­by­ing in Europe on behalf of fugi­tive Kazakh oli­garch Mukhtar Ablyazov, who is accused in Kazakhstan of embez­zling more than $6 bil­lion and is want­ed by the UK for giv­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny in court.

Media reports have linked ODF to con­tacts with for­mer European Parliament mem­ber Antonio Panzeri, a cen­tral fig­ure in the Qatargate cor­rup­tion scandal.

Taken togeth­er, the Brussels judg­ment and the sur­round­ing con­tro­ver­sies mark a seri­ous rep­u­ta­tion­al set­back for an organ­i­sa­tion that has long posi­tioned itself as a defend­er of human rights and demo­c­ra­t­ic accountability.

Original arti­cle: BRUSSELS MORNING

CONTEXT

Bakai Bank’s Demands for Damages

Bakai Bank seeks finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion from ODF for alleged rep­u­ta­tion­al and finan­cial harm it claims to have suf­fered due to alleged­ly defam­a­to­ry ODF pub­li­ca­tions. Bakai Bank demands the court in Brussels to declared Bakai Bank’s claims admis­si­ble and found­ed, and to order ODF to do the following:

• imme­di­ate­ly remove the pub­li­ca­tions, under penal­ty of a fine of 10,000 euros per pub­li­ca­tion per day;
• send a copy of the forth­com­ing judg­ment to all author­i­ties to which ODF has sent a copy of the dis­put­ed pub­li­ca­tions, with­in 5 days of the noti­fi­ca­tion of the forth­com­ing judg­ment, under penal­ty of a fine of 10,000 euros per author­i­ty and per day;
• pub­lish the entire­ty of the forth­com­ing judg­ment at the top of the first page of its web­site https://en.odfoundation.eu/ with­out com­ment, with­in 5 days of the judg­ment to come and for an unin­ter­rupt­ed peri­od of 30 days, under penal­ty of a fine of 10,000 euros per day;
• pay to Bakai Bank as dam­ages the sum of 50,000 euros as moral dam­ages and 1,000,000 euros as mate­r­i­al dam­ages, plus com­pen­sato­ry inter­est at the legal rate, from September 20, 2024. ODF may pay the dam­ages by trans­fer­ring them to the account of the King Baudouin Foundation with the ref­er­ence of the asso­ci­a­tion “BE for Ukraine”; and
• pay all the costs of the pro­ceed­ings, includ­ing pro­ce­dur­al and sched­ul­ing fees.