On December 12, 2024, Alexey Komov, a close ally of Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev (pronounced Malofeyev) and a variety of anti-LGBTQ+ groups in the West including prominent American organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom and World Congress of Families, was formally indicted on charges of “conspiracy” and “violations of U.S. sanctions.” Komov’s close relationships with prominent anti-LGBTQ+ groups in the US and abroad demonstrates the key role influential Putin allies play in anti-rights circles. Now with Trump in office, and being such a fan of Putin, efforts to hold these oligarchs accountable are being shut down.
Komov is the longtime colleague of Malofeev, and is responsible for directing several of the political projects Malofeev provides funds for through his charity, the St. Basil The Great Foundation (Фонд святителя Василия Великого). The two charges Komov faces are in relation to aid he provided Malofeev, who has been under sanctions by the United States since around 2014, both of which carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Komov, who has traveled in the U.S. in the past, is believed to be in Russia.
Komov is the American organization World Congress of Families’ (WCF) representative from Russia. Every year, WCF brings together one of the largest events featuring anti-LGBTQ+, anti-abortion, and Christian Nationalist speakers from around the world (see Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s (GPAHE) previous reporting on the World Congress of Families here).
Komov helped organize the 2014 Moscow conference called the Large Family and Future of Humanity conference. This conference was put together after WCF canceled its own planned event in Moscow following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Cancelling WCF’s conference and holding Komov’s replacement conference was likely an effort to avoid involving the WCF and their parent organization International Organization for the Family (IOF) in possible sanctions restrictions announced after the annexation. The Large Family conference, which WCF principals participated in, ended with calls for bans on “gay propaganda,” which Russia passed in June 2013, in other countries.
As a part of WCF, Komov has helped with funding for the organization and has organized workshops for members on networking and coalition building. Komov is close to WCF President Brian S. Brown, a co-founder and current President of the anti-LGBTQ+ National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and was present at the ceremony celebrating the creation of the IOF, which acts as an umbrella group for WCF, in South Africa in December 2016.
At a 2014 gala organized by NOM, Komov could be seen pictured alongside Ben Carson, who would later go on to be the Housing and Urban Development Secretary in the first Trump administration, and WCF managing director Larry Jacobs. In GPAHE’s 2024 report “Mapping the Far Right,“ WCF and Brown were identified as some of the most influential actors in the international anti-LGBTQ+ network.
WCF Managing Director Larry Jacobs (left), Ben Carson (center), Alexey Komov (Right); Source: Larry Jacobs on X
In 2013, Komov personally brought Brown to Russia along with an entourage of French anti-LGBTQ+ activists, to take part in an event organized by Malofeev’s St. Basil the Great Foundation, where Malofeev celebrated the passage of the country’s ban on “gay propaganda.” In Russia, Komov directs the Analytical Centre “Family Policy in the Russian Federation” (or “FamilyPolicy.Ru”), alongside Pavel Parfentiev, another employee of Malofeev, which organizes “pro-family” activists in Russia. FamilyPolicy.ru was also reportedly co-founded by the WCF.
Komov was on the board of directors of the Spanish anti-LGBTQ+ organization Hazte Oír, a far-right, ultraconservative lobby group, for at least six years, and was also on the board of their parent organization CitizenGo, which they use as a pressure group, from at least December 2016 to February 2023. He has served as the go-between for Hazte Oír and Malofeev in the past, including in 2013, when he worked to secure a $100,000 donation for them from the billionaire.
Komov and his colleague Parfentiev are also members of the global anti-LGBTQ+ alliance Vision Network (formerly called Agenda Europe), alongside Brown (WCF), and other American representatives such as the international branch of the American anti-LGBTQ+ legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Sharon Slater from Family Watch International (FWI), John C. Eastman from the Claremont Institute-affiliated Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, and Center for Family and Human Rights’ (C-Fam) Austin Ruse.
The Vision Network is a grouping of Christian Nationalist anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion activists who promote their agenda throughout Europe (see GPAHE’s previous reporting on Agenda Europe here and here). Open Democracy previously reported that members of Agenda Europe, such as then-CEO of CitizenGO, Alvaro Zulueta, celebrated Putin and Russia in a 2016 email to the group, and Parfentiev wrote in the same year an email stating that claims of an “existing ‘Russian invasion’ in Ukraine” were “groundless myths.”
Komov is also a member of the Patriarchal Commission for the Family, the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, a structure directly organized by the Russian Orthodox Church that aims to organize actors in Russia seeking to advance “traditional values.” Other members include Malofeev, the spouse of Christian Nationalist oligarch Vladimir Yakunin, representatives of the Kremlin and State Duma, and individuals from Russian academia.
The far-right Russian oligarch who Komov works with, Malofeev, goes by the nickname “God’s Oligarch,” has provided financial support to reactionary projects in Russia and abroad in support of Putin’s authoritarian regime. In Russia, he is known for being the chairman of the media group Tsargrad TV (Царьград ТВ, or “City of the Czar,” a reference to Russia as the “Third Rome”), a far-right Russian television network known for its Christian Nationalist and conspiracist positions on current events, as well as the chairman of the ultranationalist, Christian “Orthodox imperialist” Two-Headed Eagle movement (Всероссийский съезд общества “Двуглавый Орел”). The Two-Headed Eagle movement was created by Malofeev in 2017 for the purpose of dismantling secularism in Russia, returning the country to a tsardom supported by the Russian Orthodox Church, and providing their “unconditional support” for Putin’s policies.
In their “reporting,” Tsargrad provides support for the agenda of Russian neo-fascist Alexander Dugin, and is close to American conspiracy theorists. Conspiracist Alex Jones, former-Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, and pro-Kremlin white nationalist Charles Bausman, among others, have appeared on their shows or been republished on their site. The Tsargrad accounts were removed from many social media platforms at the onset of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Outside of Russia, Malofeev is known for his financial support for the international anti-LGBTQ+ movement, and has been referred to as a “proxy for Kremlin priorities in Europe” by the U.S. State Department. In the past, he has expressed his desire to support Christian Nationalist causes abroad, saying that “Christian Russia can help liberate the West from the new liberal anti-Christian totalitarianism of political correctness, gender ideology, mass-media censorship and neo-Marxist dogma.”
In the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Malofeev was a major funder of Russian separatist groups in Crimea in 2014 and the Donetsk People’s Republic in the East. As a result, he was designated by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as a Specially Designated National (SDN) on December 19, 2014, resulting in the application of sanctions on him.
It is within this context that Komov eventually ran into trouble with U.S. authorities. On December 12, 2024, the Department of Justice announced that they had indicted Komov for “conspiracy and violations of U.S. sanctions” related to assistance he provided Malofeev. According to the Justice Department, Komov “conspired with Malofeev” to employ Jack Hanick, an American citizen who co-founded Fox News in 1996, to work with Malofeev to found Tsargrad, which Malofeev now refers to as “Russian Fox News,” and other pro-Russian media outlets in Bulgaria and Greece.
The Department of Justice alleges that Komov was personally involved in the transfer of ownership of a shell company, a $10 million investment, around March 2015 to a Greek business associate, and “physically transported a copy of Malofeev’s certificate of shares in the Texas Bank from Moscow to Athens” to be given to the business associate. Malofeev allegedly signed the agreement to transfer the property in June 2015, but fraudulently wrote in the date July 2014 in order to give the impression that the transaction had taken place before the imposition of sanctions. In February 2023, the U.S. Attorney General seized approximately $5.4 million in property tied to Malofeev’s investment in the American bank and transferred the money to the State Department to support Ukrainian veterans.
Malofeev was charged with “conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions and violations of U.S. sanctions” in a similar case on April 6, 2022, while Hanick was charged earlier in March 2022, and received extra charges for making “false statements to FBI Agents.” Hanick was arrested on the charges on February 24, 2022 in Britain.
The investigation into Komov and Malofeev’s activities was coordinated through the Justice Department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, an “interagency law enforcement task force” focused on enforcing sanctions on Russian oligarchs following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi chose to shut down the initiative in order to focus efforts on cartels and transnational crime. It is unclear if that means the end of this effort against Komov.
