Russian State-Backed Foundation Paid Allies in the EU Despite Sanctions

In October 2024, border guards stopped a 65-year-old travel agent trying to carry 10,000 euros in cash into Estonia from Russia.

The money wasn’t her own, Estonian authorities found. The woman had traveled to Russia to pick it up after receiving it from the Foundation for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad (Pravfond), an organization set up and financed by the Russian government. She planned to deliver it to lawyers representing a Russian man in Estonia accused of collaborating with Russian intelligence.

Pravfond’s stated aim is to defend the interests of Russians living abroad, mostly by providing legal aid. But reporters in a new collaborative investigation published today, “Dear Compatriots,” also found it had paid legal fees for men accused of spying and collaborated with intelligence agents in Lithuania in a widespread effort to discredit a case against former Soviet officers. The foundation has also financed pro-Russian propaganda in various European countries, especially the former Soviet states in the Baltics, and helped advance the Kremlin’s foreign policy interests, reporters found. (Pravfond did not respond to requests for comment.)

Read more about what journalists uncovered about Pravfond’s work around the world.

The European Union sanctioned Pravfond and its executive director Aleksandr Udaltsov in June 2023, making it theoretically much harder for the foundation to move money into Europe. 

But tens of thousands of internal Pravfond emails obtained by the Danish public broadcaster DR — shared with OCCRP and over two dozen media partners in the “Dear Compatriots” project — show how the foundation has been able to continue its work across Europe with relative ease. 

In the two years since it was sanctioned, Pravfond has sent funds to recipients in at least 11 EU member states — including alleged cybercriminals and Russians arrested for smuggling migrants — using a wide range of tactics, from sending money through bank accounts held by third parties to simply finding people to carry cash across borders. 

A draft annual report on the foundation’s activities, sent to the Russian Foreign Ministry in a March 2024 email, noted that despite some “difficulties for practical work” caused by the EU sanctions, “so far it has been possible to resolve issues in each specific case, using, among other things, alternative and workaround options.” 

The Estonian travel agent caught at the border, Tatjana Sokolova, might have been one of those workarounds. Although her relationship to the accused Russian collaborator is unclear, she received five large payments from Pravfond on his behalf, totalling over 50,000 euros, before she was arrested in October, according to emails obtained by reporters. A few days after it was sanctioned, Pravfond warned her in an email about the “possible risks” of bringing their money into the EU, and urged her to think through the potential consequences of moving forward. Sokolova appeared undaunted, responding the same day to send the foundation her bank details in Russia. 

She was convicted in April of violating sanctions and sentenced to time served, plus community service. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Although sanctions violations can be tricky to establish — sanctions notices are often ambiguously worded and full of loopholes — a senior Estonian official said it was “very likely a violation of sanctions” for European citizens to bring Pravfond’s money into the EU.

“It is actually a very broad prohibition,” said Kadri Elias-Hindoalla, the director general of the Department of Sanctions and Strategic Export Control at Estonia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explaining that the EU sanctions applied not only to Pravfond’s own funds in Europe, but also any money under its control or influence, which would include the grants and payments it was making.

The Sokolova case helped establish this precedent, she said.

Although she cautioned that different European countries may implement sanctions differently, Elias-Hindoalla said the money transfers uncovered by journalists appeared to violate the spirit of the sanctions against Pravfond.  

"It is extremely regrettable that this is happening so widely and visibly in front of everyone's eyes,” she said. 

“Looking from the sanctions [implementers’] perspective, it definitely shouldn't be like this.”

Cryptocurrency and Bank Accounts Abroad 

Some people in need of assistance reached out to Pravfond directly. Others were referred by Russian embassies, or had third parties apply on their behalf. But all filled out an official application form that detailed their needs and requested a specific amount of help, typically to cover legal fees. 

Many of these applications, and subsequent signed contracts, were found among the 50,000 emails obtained by journalists in the “Dear Compatriots” project, allowing them to develop a fuller picture of how the organization operated and sent money to its grantees. 

Pravfond often solicited its “workaround options” for getting money into Europe directly from people applying for funding. In September 2023, for example, one Pravfond representative told a grant applicant in Germany that, due to the EU sanctions, “our bank transfers are not accepted on its territory.” 

“In this regard, you should think over and propose to us a scheme to receive the requested grant funds,” the representative wrote. 

The applicant — a German-Russian who told Pravfond he was facing legal problems in Germany for expressing his pro-Russian views— responded that his brother could withdraw the money in Russia, exchange it for euros, and bring it to Germany during an upcoming business trip. (It’s not clear from the communications whether this ever happened.) 

Another recipient of Pravfond money who proposed a workaround was Stanislovas Tomas, a Lithuanian lawyer and aspiring politician with a flair for publicity (he describes himself as possessing a gene for "genius, madness, and novelty," and has a YouTube channel where he shares footage of himself giving legal opinions in exotic locales). He also helped pro-Russia activists — including two men expelled from Estonia for being a danger to public security — file complaints to the U.N.’s human rights committee. 

Emails show that Tomas’s Estonian clients received Pravfond funds to help pay their legal fees. Tomas also received 10,000 euros (around $10,200) directly from the foundation, for reasons that are not specified in the emails. He did not respond to a request for comment.

In an August 2023 email, Tomas acknowledged that the sanctions imposed on Pravfond two months earlier had made it “dangerous” for lawyers in Europe to take money from the foundation. Yet, in the same email, he attached confirmation that he had received the 10,000 euros from Pravfond on July 10 through a bank account in Panama.

He also urged the foundation to find more secure means of communication.

“As for security - we probably shouldn't use email - it's not secure,” he wrote. “Latvians are crazy - they can put you on an Interpol wanted list.”

In a separate email sent in May 2023, the month before the sanctions were imposed, Tomas provided a cryptocurrency wallet address and asked if he could be paid through it. It is not clear whether the foundation agreed, and public blockchain records show no signs of larger payments to the wallet he listed.

Moving Money Via Middlemen

In several cases, Pravfond’s applicants relied on third parties and middlemen to help transfer funds into the EU after sanctions.

One such case involved Oleg Basov, a Russian arrested in Paris in October 2023 as part of an international police takedown of Ragnar Locker, a prolific ransomware group responsible for attacks on corporations around the world. At the time, Basov was living in the Czech Republic and working for a major French aerospace and defense corporation.

Basov was charged with criminal conspiracy in October 2023, but released from pretrial detention the following year. No trial date has been set. Basov has maintained his innocence in the case, and his French lawyer, Frédéric Bélot, said in an email that the allegations against his client were “incorrect” and that they were seeking to have the charges dismissed.    

In a December 2024 report, the Russian foreign ministry described Basov’s case as a “violation of the rights of Russian citizens and compatriots in foreign countries” and said it was in touch with his wife.

The Pravfond emails show that she had applied for 15,000 euros to cover her husband’s legal fees the month after his arrest, and the foundation agreed to grant it. In her emails from that month, Kovaleva confirmed receiving the money into a relative’s Russian bank account.  

Later emails provide insight into how this money reached Bélot, Basov’s French lawyer. In March 2024, a man with a Russian-sounding name sent Bélot 7,000 euros from a Montenegrin bank account. The following month, Basov’s wife paid that man — whose relationship to her is not clear — 7,000 euros in cash, plus another 30 euros to cover the bank transfer fee, according to a confirmation email the man sent to Pravfond. The following day, Bélot wrote to Kovaleva to confirm that two invoices, for 7,000 and 7,100 euros, had been settled, according to an email she shared with Pravfond.

Bélot said he had never heard of Pravfond or been in touch with the foundation in any way. “My invoices have been settled directly by my client’s wife and family,” he said. 

In an interview with Le Monde, Basov said investigators had not found any crypto wallets associated with him. He said his wife had applied to Pravfond for money because she didn’t know where else to turn.

“We were desperate, my wife was desperate,” he said. “She reached out to several foundations in Russia.”

In another case, an applicant suggested that the Russian embassy could become involved as an intermediary. 

In January 2023, Dmitry Erokhin, who oversees a legal center that has worked with Pravfond in Austria to represent Russians and organize pro-Kremlin events, wrote to the foundation to say he was having trouble opening a bank account in Austria, even before sanctions were imposed. 

“Not all banks are willing to open an account for an organization with a grant from Russia,” Erokhin wrote.

“Dima, good afternoon! I don’t want to freeze the project,” a senior adviser at Pravfond responded. “Think about opening an account in Russia (there is such a practice) or transferring funds to an Austrian citizen (a trusted person, a member of your organization).” 

The correspondence contained no indication that Erokhin followed this advice. In an email a few days later, he suggested the Russian embassy in Austria had intervened to help him obtain the funds: “The embassy is working on the option of transferring [the funds] through itself,” he wrote.

Erokhin, who did not respond to requests for comment, appeared to continue receiving funds after Pravfond was sanctioned. According to a contract he signed in March 2024, the foundation agreed to grant him 40,000 euros, to be transferred in two tranches over the year, “to continue the work of the Legal Aid Center for compatriots living in Austria.” 

Erokhin confirmed receiving a payment from the sanctioned foundation that same month, attaching a certificate showing a transfer of two million rubles — almost $22,000 — to his Sberbank account in Russia. The emails do not show what happened to the money after that.

A Dispute With a Middleman

In Latvia, one such arrangement began to unravel when a partner involved in channeling the funds demanded a commission.

IMHOclub, Latvian-Russian website that frequently published provocative pro-Russian articles, had applied to Pravfond for funding to support its goals, which it said were “to counter the demonization of Russians in Europe,” “form a loyal attitude among European citizens toward Russia,” and carry out “educational work” with Ukrainian refugees in Poland.”

In November 2018, the site’s operators — Yuri Alekseev and Pyotr Pogorodny — and one of its editors were detained in Latvia and later charged with working against the interests of Latvia by spreading disinformation using Russian state funds. Prosecutors found that the site had received about 150,000 euros from Pravfond. (Alekseev and Pogorodny did not respond to a request for comment.)

The operators of IMHOclub are now on trial — but emails show that Pravfond’s funding for the site continued long after the criminal case against them was opened, until at least 2024.

The emails provide only limited insight into how payments were routed before 2022, but since then, they appear to have been funneled through an international trustee fund affiliated with the Moscow State Aviation Technology University. From there, the money would be transferred to a Russian company owned by Pogorodny called Creative Research Agency. 

But in November 2024, a dispute arose. Mark Liberzon, head of the university fund, demanded a 20 percent commission for helping move the money, according to a separate trove of IMHOclub emails obtained by Re:Baltica, OCCRP’s Latvian partner. 

“Based on my experience, that is how I was paid in similar situations and how I paid people in similar situations,” he wrote. He also  alleged that most of the money channeled to the company “was not spent in the target directions for which it was allocated” by Pravfond,

After a heated back-and-forth, Liberzon offered Pogorodny a compromise: In lieu of the commission, he asked for a flat payment of 800,000 rubles, worth over $8,000 at the time. “In this case, we can consider the matter closed for today,” he wrote.

The emails do not make it clear how the dispute was ultimately resolved, and neither Liberzon nor the Moscow State Aviation Technology University responded to requests for comment.

Funds Requested After Sanctions 

In multiple cases, lawyers working with Pravfond in European Union countries continued to request and receive funding from the foundation well after the sanctions were imposed, the emails show. 

All people accused of a crime in the EU have the right to a legal defense, and to access legal aid if needed. Because of this, EU sanctions rules include exemptions to allow sanctioned people to hire a lawyer to defend them. 

But Elias-Hindoalla of the Estonian Department of Sanctions said these exemptions would apply only in the event that Pravfond itself needed legal services. 

"If funds from Pravfond were used to pay for the legal expenses of a third party, then this is definitely a violation of the sanctions, as a court in Estonia has also confirmed,” she said, referring to the Sokolova case. “It does not fall under the exemptions in any way."

In Greece, the law firm Dedes & Associates had been receiving funds from Pravfond since at least 2021 to support Russians who had been arrested for smuggling migrants into the country on boats. (The law firm's founder and chairman, Konstantinos Dedes, has also served as Russia’s honorary consul in Greece.)

Funding requests continued after sanctions were imposed on Pravfond. In February 2024, Dedes requested additional support from the foundation to defend a Russian citizen arrested for piloting a boat carrying 18 migrants, mostly from Africa, from the Turkish coast to Lesbos.

In March 2024, Dedes & Associates emailed Pravfond two signed supplementary grant agreements totaling 13,000 euros. Two months later, it submitted another application, this time for 4,000 euros. 

It is not clear if and when these additional funds were granted. Dedes & Associates did not respond to a request for comment.

Two other Greek lawyers representing Russians accused of smuggling migrants also sought funds from Pravfond after it was sanctioned. 

In August 2023, the lawyer Ilias Spyrliadis emailed a draft contract and budget request for $7,500 to defend a Russian sailor before the Greek Supreme Court. According to the draft contract, which Spyrliadis signed, the funds were to be wired not to his EU bank account, but to a private bank account in Dubai. It remains unclear if these funds were paid out. 

A few months later, in November 2023, however, a Pravfond adviser informed Spyrliadis’s law firm that the foundation had approved a separate subsidy of 6,820 euros to defend a different Russian citizen in a different case. 

Then in January 2024, Spyrliadis’ law firm submitted a signed confirmation along with a Sberbank receipt showing that a first tranche of 160,237 rubles — worth about 1,750 euros — had been received from Pravfond. The payment, tied to a contract signed in December 2023, was made to a Visa card held by a woman with a Russian first name, whose relationship with the law firm is not made clear in the emails. The confirmation didn’t specify what the funds were for. 

Spyrliadis did not respond to a request for comment.

Greek lawyer Georgios Leonidis also began requesting funds from Pravfond in 2021 to defend Russians accused of smuggling migrants. The emails show that this cooperation continued even after Pravfond was sanctioned — in October 2023, Leonidis confirmed he had received 7,000 euros from the foundation.

By December 2023, he was drafting another contract, this time requesting 3,500 euros to provide legal aid to a Russian accused of migrant smuggling. It is unclear if he received that grant. 

Leonidis declined to comment on the specifics of the case, citing attorney-client confidentiality, but said in a brief email to reporters: “Keep in mind that the defense of each accused is a fundamental right of every person” according to the European Court of Human Rights. 

‘Complete Nervous Breakdown’

Though the emails show Pravfond was often able to work around sanctions, the EU’s move did make its operations more difficult. 

One example was a Finnish association called Mosaiikki, which aims to “promote the integration of immigrants and support cultural pluralism,” according to its website. A Pravfond partner for years, it also gives legal advice to Russians in the country. 

In November 2023, after Pravfond was sanctioned, Mosaiikki’s chairwoman, Tatjana Doultseva, wrote to the foundation explaining that she had kept the project afloat by transferring Pravfond funds from her personal bank account into Mosaiikki’s account. She warned, however, that Finnish banking rules would make this arrangement impossible to continue in 2024. 

The letter, sent by email along with an application for 18,000 euros to fund the organization’s work the following year, included a proposal to collect the money in St. Petersburg. Doultseva urged prompt payment, noting that it might become harder to cross the border in the future. 

“This is a complete nervous breakdown - the new Finnish government is openly discussing today closing the entire border,” she wrote. 

In response to a request for comment, Doultseva denied that she had received Pravfond money after March 2023, and said her cooperation with the foundation ended in 2024. 

The amount she received, she said, amounted to under 600 euros per month and had helped both Russian and Ukrainian migrants understand the Finnish legal system. 

The project received a lot of grateful words from different people, including Ukrainian refugees,” she said. “There have never been any negative reviews.”

Doultseva added that she had been in “deep shock” after DR and its international partners had published an investigation in June last year revealing that Mosaiikki, which was also funded by Finnish taxpayers, received Pravfond funding. 

This is borne out by the emails, which show her panicking after the story came out.  “We have a disaster here, to put it mildly,” she explained in a letter to Igor Panevkin, the chief adviser of Pravfond until he died in August 2024. 

“How can the foundation quickly help (and can it help quickly?) and in such a way as not to implicate the organization and me? Can the foundation transfer money to another organization and somehow without mentioning our society, since such a disaster has occurred?” she asked.

In the emails seen by reporters, Panevkin did not have any ideas to share. 

“For now,” he wrote, “we are under the gun of the media and the EU intelligence community.”

Holger Roonemaa (OCCRP/Delfi Estonia), Inga Springe (Re:Baltica), Florian Reynaud (Le Monde), and Damien Leloup (Le Monde) contributed reporting.