George Clooney faces a hypocrisy accusation in a new defamation case targeting his human rights organization.
Ahmed Gadalla, a 46-year-old Liberian steel magnate, filed court documents against the Sentry, the investigative group Clooney, 65, co-founded in 2016 with John Prendergast. The businessman claims the organization published a lengthy report filled with “false” narratives about his financial dealings and alleged ties to international conflict.
The court docs lay out a sweeping list of accusations the Sentry allegedly spread about Gadalla. The organization “falsely told the world that Mr Gadalla bankrolled a warlord’s assault on his own country’s capital with stolen public money, that he paid Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries, that he secretly controls three Libyan banks and uses them to commit fraud and launder money, that he oversaw the printing of counterfeit currency in Russia and that he smuggles combat drones and military hardware in violation of a United Nations arms embargo,” the filings state.
Gadalla’s team also claims the Sentry asked the European Union to impose sanctions on him so he could face charges in Libya. The businessman maintains the group never properly checked its facts and refused to report his response to the allegations.
The steel magnate’s central argument hinges on what he calls a glaring double standard. Court documents point to Clooney’s own history of demanding accountability from media outlets that report inaccurately about his personal life. “When the false story was about his own family, the Sentry’s co-founder applied a very different standard,” the docs read, referencing a 2024 article that was later deleted.
That British tabloid removed its story after two days and issued an apology, which Clooney rejected. “There is one constant when a person or company is caught doing something wrong,” the “Michael Clayton” star said at the time. “The cover-up is always worse.”
Clooney has built a public profile around media criticism stretching back more than a decade. At the 2009 London Film Festival, he vented frustration about how falsehoods multiply across outlets. “The problem is that there is so little reporting anymore, somebody will write a story, and it will be in 1,800 different outlets and you have no recourse,” he said. “It will be false and you’ll go, ‘it’s not true’ and they’ll go ‘we’re not saying that, we’re saying a London tabloid has said it.’ So they’re just reprinting and reprinting things that aren’t necessarily true.”
The Sentry was established to expose war crimes, human rights abuses, and money laundering from conflict zones, with a stated mission to “hold the perpetrators and enablers of violence and corruption to account.” That same year, Clooney and his wife Amal, the human rights lawyer he wed in 2014, launched the Clooney Foundation for Justice to provide free legal aid for free speech and women’s rights in more than 40 countries.
The couple, parents to twins Alexander and Ella, generally keep their family out of the spotlight. Gadalla’s case specifically names the actor rather than just the organization, suggesting a strategy of personalizing the legal fight by highlighting Clooney’s own public statements about journalistic standards.
The specific report at issue accused Gadalla of fraudulently borrowing $300 million from an Abu Dhabi bank through Emirati companies, plus sponsoring Russian mercenaries and money laundering. The steel magnate disputes all of it.
A representative for Clooney was not immediately available for comment when contacted.