A Shadow Israeli Company Reportedly Influenced Dozens of Elections Around the World
The homepage of the website of the consortium of journalists "Forbidden Stories".
© Screenshot/ “Forbidden Stories”
Text by: RFI Follow
4 mins
The collective of investigative journalists "Forbidden Stories" revealed, this Wednesday, February 15, that an Israeli company would have influenced dozens of elections in the world.
Advertisement
Read more
By means of fake accounts on social networks, but also of espionage and lobbying of political decision-makers, this disinformation cell would have interfered in electoral campaigns and referendums, particularly in Africa and Europe.
The company, without legal existence, nicknamed "Team Jorge" by journalists, because of the pseudonym of one of its leaders, Tal Hanan, is made up of former members of the Israeli security services according to the revelations of the collective on Wednesday.
Its various sponsors have not been identified.
►Also read: Israel accused of using Pegasus spyware against its own citizens
With complete impunity, without moral principles, this clandestine Israeli company operates in the shadows, and offers its services to the highest bidder, reports our correspondent in Jerusalem,
Sami Boukhelifa
.
“Team Jorge” offers a turnkey solution.
A veritable virtual army with thousands of fake social media accounts.
Thanks to their formidable software, they give life to avatars, created from scratch, but which have an email address, a date of birth and even a telephone number.
The sites can thus verify their existence, without suspecting anything.
The mission of these fake profiles is to publish opinions oriented to influence as many people as possible online.
Implicated in the Cambridge Analytica scandal
Jorge was already involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, named after this company accused of having analyzed very large volumes of data to sell influence tools used in particular by Donald Trump.
The three journalists from Radio France and two Israeli media who conducted the investigation passed themselves off as potential clients.
“
We intervened in 33 election campaigns at the presidential level
,” the Israeli underground society told them.
“
Two-thirds took place in Africa.
And 27 were successful
.
In Europe, the company would have intervened in the referendum, not recognized by the Spanish government, organized by the Catalan separatists in 2014, according to the site of Radio France.
In Africa, "
we can confirm that during the summer of 2022, as the Kenyan presidential election approached, Jorge became interested in the accounts of relatives of future President William Ruto
, Dennis Itumbi and Davis Chirchir, members of his campaign team,
according to the Forbidden Stories website
.
Disinformation at BFM TV
The “Team Jorge” also infiltrated the interior of the French continuous news channel BFM TV, through one of the presenters: Rachid M'Barki, by broadcasting on the air, by the intermediary of this accomplice presenter, subjects which had not been validated by the editorial staff.
Sensitive subjects, around the Russian oligarchs, Western Sahara, Qatar, Cameroon which passed through the meshes of the editorial net since they were inserted on the antenna at the last minute.
When the management of BFM questions Rachid M'Barki on the subject, the presenter highlights his editorial free will and evokes an intermediary named Jean-Pierre Duthion.
He is a media consultant, who is described by an influence agency as a "
mercenary of disinformation
", who himself would have received orders, placed by other intermediaries, without knowing the end customer.
His role was to put matters in the hands of journalists.
These briefs relating to the Russian oligarchs, or to Qatar, which would have been “
provided turnkey on behalf of foreign clients
”, according to the investigative consortium.
One of these briefs, on the difficulties of the yachting industry in Monaco since the imposition of international sanctions on Russia and its nationals, suggests for example that the objective is to criticize the sanctions policy of European countries .
Rachid M'Barki claims not to have been paid to broadcast these subjects.
But the journalists of the investigative collective which revealed this investigation on Wednesday estimate that such a service could bring in around €3,000 per unit of the subject broadcast.
Rachid M'Barki for his part denies having participated in any disinformation campaign and says that he may have been had.
In any case, he was suspended by his channel when the Forbidden Stories collective alerted his superiors in January.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
Israel
Technologies
Social networks
Internet
Company
Cybercriminality