(Part 1)
Judicial Watch: Documents Show State Department Links to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation – Romania
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch released 49 pages of new State Department documents showing top Soros representatives in Romania collaborating with the State Department in a program jointly funded by, among others, Soros’s Open Society Foundations – Romania and USAID, called the “Open Government Partnership.”
The documents were obtained thanks to a March 2018 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the U.S. Department of State and USAID after it failed to substantively respond to an October 2017 request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:18-cv-00667)). The lawsuit seeks:
All records relating to any contracts, grants or other allocations/disbursements of funds by the State Department to the Open Society Foundation – Romania and/or its personnel and/or any OSFR subsidiary or affiliate.
All assessments, evaluations, reports or similar records relating to the work of Open Society Foundation – Romania and/or its subsidiaries or affiliated organizations.
On September 16, 2016, the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Senior Program Designer Jennryn Wetzler sent an email announcing that the featured speaker in a State Department-sponsored “Open Government Partnership” conference call would be longtime Soros foundations official in Romania, Ovidiu Voicu. Voicu is the Executive Director of a Romanian non-government organization (NGO) called the Center for Public Innovation, which describes itself as a “spin-off” of Soros’ Open Society Foundation Romania.
From: Wetzler, Jennryn M
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2016 2:36 PM
To: Wetzler, Jennryn M
Cc: ‘Jan GondoI’; ‘Nicole Allen’; ‘Ovidiu Voicu’; ECACollaboratory .
Subject: Invitation to the monthly OGP and open education network call: 9/28 at 14:00 UTC/ 10:00 EDT
Please join us for a conversation with Ovidiu Voicu, Executive Director of Romania’s Center for Public Innovation. Ovidiu will share updates from Romania, including recent OGP commitments to OER and open data & transparency in education! We encourage everyone to share thoughts and questions, as well as their own country updates.
Speaker Bio: Ovidiu Voicu leads the Center Public Innovation, a spin-off of the Open Society Foundation Romania. He joined the Foundation in 2000 to coordinate its social research programs, and in April 2012, he. took the leadership of the newly created public policy unit. In 2015, with the Foundation phasing-out its activities in Romania, Ovidiu and his team created the Center for Public Innovation, to continue the open , society legacy and work on the ground.
On April 19, 2016, Wetzler emails Romanian chancellery official and Open Government Partnership participant Radu Puchiu regarding a meeting with an “Open Society Romania colleague” regarding the possibility of Romania committing to open educational resources (OER) programs.
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