Libyan steel businessman Ahmed Gadalla has filed a lawsuit against The Sentry – the human rights organization co-founded by George Clooney. The lawsuit was filed on October 19 in federal court in Washington and is for defamation. Gadalla claims that the organization spread false allegations about him without sufficient fact-checking and without giving him a chance to respond.
According to court documents, a report by The Sentry linked the 46-year-old businessman to a $300 million fraud that he received from a bank in Abu Dhabi through companies in the United Arab Emirates. The lawsuit also alleges that the organization has accused him of financing a Libyan warlord's attack on the capital Tripoli, payments to the Russian group “Wagner“, secret control over three Libyan banks and money laundering.
Gadala also disputes allegations that he oversaw the printing of counterfeit currency in Russia and that he participated in the smuggling of combat drones and military equipment in violation of a UN arms embargo. According to him, The Sentry has also asked the European Union to impose sanctions so that he can be prosecuted in Libya.
In the lawsuit, Gadala also directs his criticism at George Clooney. He recalled the actor's public stances against publications about his family, which Clooney said were dangerous, irresponsible and unverified.
“When the false story concerned his own family, The Sentry co-founder applied a completely different standard“, the court documents state.
Gadala refers to a case from 2014, when the Daily Mail published false information about the family of Amal Clooney, then Amal Alamuddin. The publication took down the material from its website and issued an apology, which the actor rejected. Clooney subsequently said: “When a person or a company is caught doing something wrong, one thing remains constant – cover-ups are always worse.
The Sentry was founded in 2016 by Clooney and John Prendergast to track financial networks linked to war crimes, corruption and human rights abuses. In April 2026, the organization published an investigation in which it presented Gadala as a key figure in networks linked to the power of Khalifa Haftar in eastern Libya.
The filing of the lawsuit does not prove Gadala's allegations, and the dispute is in its early stages. As of the publication of the information, a representative for George Clooney did not comment to Page Six. It has not been reported that the court has ruled on the merits of the charges.