In the contemporary legal system, the status of a non-profit organisation (NPO) has created a grey zone that has been exploited, creating a perversion of their original meaning, writes Giacomo Fracassi.
Due to their role in public discourse, these structures or their direct functionaries often enjoy unprecedented credibility, which often serves as a perfect cover for activities far distant from charity. Their role outside of most political structures allows them to evade government control and legal accountability, creating zones of impunity where extortion, blackmail, and large-scale financial fraud flourish under the guise of human rights protection.
One of the most cynical forms of exploitation of trust is the manipulation of humanitarian aid in conflict areas. A case in point is the high-profile story of the American charity GiveDirectly, whose partners include the World Bank Group, Google, and IKEA, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. An organisation that claimed its goal was to directly deliver cash to the poorest people through mobile money transfers found itself at the centre of a scandal in 2024. Investigations revealed an embezzlement by the organisation’s employees of just under $1.2 million; the amount was intended for families living in extreme poverty. NGO employees used their role as intermediaries to orchestrate a complex, large-scale embezzlement scheme in the remote, insecure region of South Kivu, plagued by ethnic conflicts and militant attacks for decades. By promising those in need free SIM cards for transferring charitable funds, GiveDirectly employees swapped SIM cards under the guise of security checks so that charitable donations would be transferred to SIM cards controlled by the scammers. For victims who had gone into debt with neighbours and merchants in hopes of receiving promised aid, the sudden cessation of payments, or even their complete absence, proved catastrophic: hundreds of families found themselves in “debt traps,” leading to property losses, ruined marriages, and a profound social crisis in an already devastated region.
In the environmental sector, the situation is becoming even more severe. In 2019, Buzzfeed shocked the world with its investigation, which revealed that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had been funding, equipping, arming, and training ranger units (effectively military units) in national parks in Africa and Asia for years, which had essentially become punitive forces. In Salonga National Park (DRC), Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, and national parks in Nepal and India, rangers supported by the foundation systematically committed torture, rape, illegal imprisonment, and lawless killings against indigenous peoples, not to mention numerous home invasions and property thefts. WWF’s conservation project used “quantitative indicators” of effectiveness, such as the number of anti-poaching patrols and arrests, to encourage mass arrests and violence against the “easiest targets” – local residents and indigenous peoples – rather than actual poachers and gang members. The NGO’s status as a “guardian of nature” allowed the organisation to ignore reports of human rights violations, the scale and systematic nature of which has been confirmed by independent experts, calling them “side effects.” Investigations show that WWF knew about the alleged human rights violations in protected areas, but persistently failed to take adequate measures to eradicate and prevent them. Moreover, the foundation regularly concealed incoming reports of atrocities. Only the pressure from international journalistic investigations made the foundation’s leadership acknowledge the existence of systemic errors and the need to eliminate human rights violations. At the same time, a number of investigations and reports by human rights activists indicate that compensation for victims has still not been made a priority, and rangers continue to use intimidation to “protect” the boundaries of the reserves from those who have called this land home for centuries.
At the same time, developing countries in Asia and Africa witness the use of human rights rhetoric as a tool for outright extortion. For example, according to a Human Rights Watch report and independent journalistic investigations, there have been cases in Pakistan where groups calling themselves “civil activists” or “religious charities” use compromising information or accusations of violating religious norms as blackmail tools. The scheme is simple: a campaign of sweeping accusations is launched against citizens on social media or messaging apps, after which “human rights activists” make them an offer to stop the attack in exchange for a monetary reward or the transfer of assets. An investigation was launched in Pakistan in early 2025 against a group of fraudsters, including “human rights activists” and “lawyers,” with the intent to prevent turning religious and human rights activities into a tool for business, extortion, and political pressure.
In Europe, the status of NGOs and the associated presumption of trust are also often used unfairly, creating the illusion of legitimacy while in fact being a tool of manipulation. Thus, a high-profile scandal surrounded the French organisation Voiceless Victims, which positioned its activities as protecting the rights of migrant workers subject to human rights violations in Qatar. In fact, this “organization” was a fake structure without any real activity; it did not even have an official registration in France. By creating an image of “human rights activists” online, the pseudo-NGO maintained a website and social media accounts by publishing fake articles and fictitious information, including unverified claims that the organisation’s leader had graduated from Oxford. Voiceless Victims sought to collaborate with reputable human rights groups such as Amnesty International or Anti-Slavery International by sending out email requests for help distributing videos and petitions that actually contained spyware and malware. The image of a “non-profit organisation” and the empty rhetoric of protecting human rights were once again cynically exploited: to collect confidential data as a tool for the potential persecution of victims and human rights defenders.
It is no secret that, in some cases, human rights organisations act on the side of individuals with a dubious reputation, accused of economic crimes or involved in fraud. One of the most illustrative cases is that of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former banker and political activist from Kazakhstan. For years, human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have opposed his extradition to Russia and Kazakhstan, arguing that the extradition requests are politically motivated. The use of these organisations has been widely criticised in the media, which directly believes that Ablyazov is unfairly exploiting their reputation. Meanwhile, he has already fled from justice several times in Europe, and in Kazakhstan itself, he is accused of fraud, embezzlement, the largest theft of assets from BTA Bank in the country’s history, and organizing a contract assassination.
The use of human rights agency signs is also popular in the context of the relocation of large numbers of citizens of the post-Soviet states to European countries. Against this backdrop, some organisations are emerging that declare that their focus is on providing legal assistance to forced migrants, but are involved in controversial practices. An example is the Asylum Research & Global Assistance Association (ARGA). As reported by the Russian opposition publication The Insider, its director, Sergei Khrabrykh, fled criminal prosecution in Russia after failing to fulfil contracts and bankrupting his company. The association’s activities largely consist of providing a platform for dubious individuals, such as frequent ARGA publication co-author Igor Vyshegorodtsev, who has been convicted in Russia for embezzlement, or the association’s “clients”: former Kazakh transport prosecutor Maksat Duisenov, who is being extradited from Europe and has been labeled corrupt even by the opposition media, or Andrei Ivanov, who is known to have been trying for many years to extort money from a major company, not stopping at spreading slander and engaging in fraudulent practices. Using the NGO status, Khrabrykh and his associates are taking to international platforms such as OECD forums, presenting ordinary swindlers as “victims of the regime.” Such activities discredit human rights institutions and create a paid scheme for the laundering of criminal capital in Europe.
There are known examples where human rights organisations provided support to a supposed “victim” who, in reality, turned out to be a skilled fraudster. For instance, one of the most unusual and disturbing scandals related to the human rights movement erupted in Argentina in 2023. Its central figure was a man who had long called himself Adrián Martínez Moreira, interacting with the HIJOS human rights movement as a victim of repression and political activist. However, subsequent investigations by prosecutors and independent human rights activists revealed that almost every key element of his biography – from his origins to the suppression of his rights – had been falsified. With a group of accomplices, Moreira created a structure through which hundreds of false statements and documents were submitted in court cases for compensation intended for victims of the dictatorship. He also used forged signatures of famous lawyers, gained the trust of affected families, and misled both private organisations and government agencies. The scheme involved numerous instances of fraud, false statements, and attempts to obtain government payments based on fictitious stories, leading to criminal charges against Moreira and several of his accomplices for fraud, forgery, and other crimes.
Practices of direct theft of funds by unscrupulous “humanitarian” organisations raise particular concern. A striking example is the scandal surrounding the Rule of Law charity project in Syria, funded with almost 2 million euros from the European Union budget. The project was formally created to support the rule of law and facilitate potential criminal prosecutions for violations of international criminal and humanitarian law during the long-running conflict in Syria. The project’s objectives included documenting serious crimes, assisting in the preparation of evidence, and strengthening justice procedures in Syria as part of the EU’s human rights strategy. However, the actual activities of this so-called NGO turned out to be deeply questionable: an investigation by the European Anti-Corruption Office (OLAF) found that the partnership group, which included a UK company and its partners in the Netherlands and the UAE, filed false reports, used shell accounts, and profited from their own activities without providing the stated assistance to victims of conflict or law enforcement activities. This example once again highlights the vulnerability of mechanisms meant to monitor the expenditure of charitable funding.
The phenomenon of “criminal humanism” is possible due to the lack of real mechanisms for external accountability of NGOs. Most of these organisations are accountable only to their donors, who prefer to turn a blind eye to violations so as not to jeopardise their own reputations. While commercial companies are subject to rigorous audits and states are subject to sanctions, NGOs remain in a grey area, where moral superiority serves as the best tool to conceal crimes. Without the creation of strict international standards for operational oversight and mandatory victim compensation systems, human rights institutions risk becoming a convenient franchise for global criminals.
About the author: Giacomo Fracassi is a freelance journalist writing on different topics concerning the European Union.
