“The current head of PACE Tiny Kox protected the Kremlin’s interests for several years, and his election as the head of PACE was lobbied for by a GRU spy,” The Dossier Center wrote, as cited by Poland’s wnp.pl website on Thursday night.
The spy in question was Valeri Levitsky, who worked under the cover of Russian Consul General in Strasbourg, France, where the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights watchdog, is located.
‘Kox could sort it out’
If the Kremlin wanted something, Kox “could sort it out,” Levitski said, according to The Dossier Center, as quoted by nltimes.nl.
In 2018, Levitsky was expelled from France for spying, but not before he was able to manipulate a succession of PACE presidents, including Kox and Spain’s Pedro Agramunt, "to get them under Russia’s control," The Dossier Center also reported, as cited by nltimes.nl.
Kox and Ludmiła Kozłowska
Meanwhile, Poland’s wpolityce.pl website noted that Tiny Kox was among several officials who in 2018 requested the granting of a French visa to the activist Ludmiła Kozłowska.
After receiving the French visa, Kozłowska took part in two Council of Europe events in Strasbourg, where she accused Poland’s conservative government of “authoritarian tendencies” and “anti-European rhetoric,” wpolityce.pl reported.
The London-based Dossier Center is a project founded by the exiled Russian businessman and opposition activist Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
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Source: wnp.pl, wpolityce.pl, nltimes.nl, euobserver.com