A post is being shared on social media claiming that the Russian government has recently issued an arrest warrant against the U.S. billionaire George Soros. Also, this post claims that the Chinese Government had declared George Soros a global terrorist. Let’s verify the claims made in the post.
The archived version of the post can be seen here.
Claim: Russian government issued an international arrest warrant against George Soros and the Chinese government declared Soros a global terrorist.
Fact: The Russian Government did not issue any such arrest warrant against the U.S. billionaire George Soros. George Soros’s name was not listed in the ‘Red Notices’ section on the ‘Interpol’ website. Also, the Chinese government did not issue any press release declaring George Soros a global terrorist. A spokesperson for the Open Society Foundation has confirmed both these two claims as baseless. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched to check whether the Russian government had issued any such arrest warrant against the Chairman of the Soros Fund Managemment LLC and the founder of the Open Society Foundation George Soros, we could not find any press release or statement confirming this news on the Russian government website or in any of their official social media handles. Also, we could not find any press release confirming this news on the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia website. If the Russian government had made any such announcement, several international news websites would have reported that information. But we could not find any news article reporting this information on the internet.
Amid the escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine, on 26 February 2022, George Soros through a blogpost condemned the Russian aggression against Ukraine. George Soros called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions a direct attack on the sovereignty of all states that were once in the Soviet nations and called out all world nations to stand in support of Ukraine. But, it is nowhere reported that George Soros was issued an international arrest warrant for these remarks on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Also, his name was not listed in the ‘Red Notices’ section on the ‘Interpol’ website.
The Russian Government banned the Open Society Foundation in 2015, saying that the organization poses a threat to both state security and the Russian constitution. In 2018, when the same news got circulated on social media, the Kremlin had clarified that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not seek an international arrest warrant for U.S. Billionaire George Soros.
A few fact-check organizations like the ‘Check Your Post” and ‘USA Today’ have contacted Jonathan Birchall, a spokesperson for the Open Society Foundation, for more clarification regarding this viral news circulating on social media. Jonathan Birchall said, “We can confirm that we have no indication that the Russian government has ever issued an arrest warrant for George Soros’. Likewise, there are no reliable sources to confirm that the Chinese government has declared George Soros a global terrorist. The Chinese government did not issue any such press release on its website. Jonathan Birchall has also confirmed that the Chinese Government had not declared George Soros a terrorist.
To sum it up, neither George Soros was issued an arrest warrant by the Russian government, nor he was declared a global terrorist by the Chinese government.
