American billionaire George Soros has influenced many judges at the European Court of Human Rights, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday. A former lawyer who is now deputy chairman of Russia's security council, Medvedev was speaking at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum about the problems of the modern judiciary.

revealed that 22 out of 100 ECHR judges who served between 2009 and 2019 had “strong ties” to Soros, whether through his Open Society Foundation or intermediary NGOs that received its funding.

“For many years, these judges literally ate out of his hand and, on direction from across the ocean, stamped biased court verdicts – which, by the way, have not been revised even after these corruption scandals,” said Medvedev. 

For all the talk of freedom and competition, Medvedev said, the West does what it wants while placing discriminatory prohibitions on others. International economic law has become “pure fiction,” as evidenced by the “lawless predatory measures” against Russian state, corporate and private property, and even the confiscation of diplomatic accounts.

“war crimes” for evacuating children threatened by Ukrainian shelling. He called the ICC’s warrant for Putin’s arrest a “casus belli,” a reason for war against any country that attempts to carry it out.

“political tool of warmongers” and a “worthy heir” to the ICTY, the ad-hoc war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which he called an “ugly form of justice that brought nothing but disaster” and discredited international law.

“There is no reason to obey the decisions of legal structures that have completely discredited or outlived themselves,” Medvedev argued. “If judiciary institutions do not function, they will be replaced by others that do.”