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How Russian-funded fake news network aims to disrupt election in Europe - BBC investigation
How Russian-funded fake news network aims to disrupt election in Europe - BBC investigation
A secret Russian-funded network is attempting to disrupt upcoming democratic elections in an eastern European state, the BBC has found.
Using an undercover reporter, we discovered the network promised to pay participants if they posted pro-Russian propaganda and fake news undermining Moldova's pro-EU ruling party ahead of the country's 28 September parliamentary ballot.
Participants were paid to find supporters of Moldova's pro-Russia opposition to secretly record - and also to carry out a so-called poll. This was done in the name of a non-existent organisation, making it illegal. The results of this selective sampling, an organiser from the network suggested, could lay the groundwork to question the outcome of the election.
The results of the so-called poll, suggesting the ruling party will lose, have already been published online.
In fact, official polls suggest the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) founded by President Maia Sandu is currently ahead of the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP).
We have found links between the secret network and Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor - sanctioned by the US for "the Kremlin's malign influence operations" and now a fugitive in Moscow. The UK has also sanctioned him for corruption.
We have also found links between the network and a non-profit organisation (NGO) called Evrazia.
Evrazia has connections to Mr Shor and was sanctioned by the UK, US and EU for allegedly bribing Moldovan citizens to vote against EU membership last year. The referendum on joining passed, but by a very small margin.
"In 2024 the focus of [Ilan Shor's] campaign was money. This year the focus is disinformation," Moldova's chief of police, Viorel Cernauteanu, told the BBC World Service.
We asked Ilan Shor and Evrazia to respond to our investigation findings - they did not provide a response.
Moldova may be small, but sandwiched between Ukraine, and EU-member Romania, it has strategic significance for both Europe and the Kremlin, experts say.
The World Service infiltrated the network - co-ordinated on the messaging app Telegram - through a link sent to us by a whistleblower.
This gave us a crucial insight into how an anti-democratic propaganda network operates.
Our undercover reporter Ana, and 34 other recruits, were asked to attend secret online seminars which would "prepare operatives". With titles like "How to go from your kitchen to national leader", they seemed to serve as a vetting process. Ana and the others had to pass regular tests on what they had learned.
Our reporter was then contacted by a network co-ordinator called Alina Juc. Ms Juc's social media profile says she is from Transnistria, a separatist region of eastern Moldova loyal to Moscow, and her Instagram shows she has made multiple trips to Russia over the past few years.
Ms Juc told Ana she would be paid 3,000 Moldovan lei ($170, £125) a month to produce TikTok and Facebook posts in the run-up to the election, and that she would be sent the money from Promsvyazbank (PSB) - a sanctioned Russian state-owned bank which acts as the official bank for the Russian defence ministry, and is a shareholder in one of Ilan Shor's companies.
Ana and the other recruits were trained to produce social media posts using ChatGPT. Content "attracts people if the picture contains some satire… over reality", they were told, but that too much AI should be avoided to ensure posts felt "organic".
Inside the Telegram group, Ana and the BBC had access to previous instructions issued to participants. Initially, they had been asked for patriotic posts about historical figures in Moldovan history - but gradually the demands had become overtly political.
Ana was asked to post unfounded allegations - including that Moldova's current government is planning to falsify the election results, Moldova's potential EU membership is contingent on its citizens becoming LGBTQ+, and that President Sandu is facilitating child trafficking.
Social media campaigns are now frequently central to national elections. We monitored the social media posts supporting Moldova's ruling party PAS, but did not uncover any obvious disinformation campaign.
Throughout our undercover exercise with the network we only shared posts which were factually accurate, and we limited their number.
We wanted to find out who else was in the network, as we had evidence it was made up of multiple groups similar to the one we infiltrated. We looked for patterns of similar activity across other accounts that we could monitor through our Telegram access.
The network, we concluded, is made up of at least 90 TikTok accounts - some masquerading as news outlets - which have posted thousands of videos totalling more than 23 million views and 860,000 likes since January. Moldova's population is just 2.4 million.
We shared our findings with US-based Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), and it told us its analysis shows the network could be even bigger. The broader network has amassed more than 55 million views and over 2.2 million likes on TikTok since January, DFRLab found.
The network did not just post disinformation. Ms Juc also offered Ana 200 Moldovan lei ($12, £9) an hour in cash to conduct unofficial polling, interviewing people in Moldova's capital about their preferred candidates in the election.
Before conducting this task, participants were given training on how to subtly sway those being polled.
They were also asked to secretly tape the interviewees who said they supported the pro-Russian opposition.
Ms Juc revealed this was to "prevent the vote from being rigged" suggesting the survey results and the secret recordings would be used, in the event of a PAS victory, as supposed evidence that it won unfairly.
Our evidence also suggests the network our reporter joined is being bank-rolled from Russia. Ana overheard - and filmed - Alina Juc on the phone asking for money from Moscow.
"Listen, can you bring money from Moscow… I just need to give my people their salaries," we filmed her saying.
It was not clear who would be sending her the money, but we have found links between the network and Ilan Shor via NGO Evrazia.
Ilan Shor and Evrazia did not respond to our investigation findings.
The BBC found photos of Ana's handler, Alina Juc, on Evrazia's website - and one of the Telegram groups Ana was added to was called "Evrazia leaders."
The UK Foreign Office says Evrazia operates "in Moldova on behalf of corrupt fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor… to destabilise Moldovan democracy."
We asked Alina Juc to comment on our findings - she did not respond.
TikTok said it had implemented additional safety and security measures ahead of the elections and continued to "aggressively counter deceptive behaviour". Facebook's owner Meta did not respond to our findings.
The Russian embassy in the UK denied involvement in fake news and electoral interference and claimed that it was the EU that had been interfering in Moldova's election.
Additional Reporting: Malvina Cojocari, Andreea Jitaru, Angela Stanciu
Source: BBC
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