“The European Union announces a new set of sanctions against Russia. (…) Repeated sanctions that make yacht builders in Monaco fear the worst; the freezing of the assets of the oligarchs puts their sector in great difficulty. (…) [Ils] appeal to Prince Albert to avoid sinking: 10,000 jobs are at stake on the Côte d’Azur. »
At first glance, this brief sequence from a night newspaper, broadcast on BFM-TV at the end of 2022, has nothing special except a somewhat surprising tone. Except that the text, read by the presenter Rachid M’Barki, was not written by the editorial staff of the television channel but by an agent of influence working on behalf of a client of an Israeli company specializing in disinformation campaigns.
The world and its partners investigated for several months, within the Forbidden Stories consortium, on this mysterious company, nicknamed “Team Jorge”, which both electoral candidates and private companies use.
“Story Killers”, investigation into disinformation mercenaries
For several months, some twenty newsrooms, including that of the Worldinvestigated, within the Forbidden Stories consortium, on companies specializing in the manipulation of public opinion and the dissemination of false information. As part of this project called “Story Killers”, three journalists from the consortium were able to participate, posing as intermediaries for a potential French client, in several meetings with pharmacies selling tools of influence ” keys in hand “.
This investigation notably made it possible to reveal the existence of “Team Jorge”, a very discreet Israeli company which claims its interference in several dozen elections throughout the world. It offers its customers an arsenal of illegal services, from the hacking of e-mail boxes and private messaging from adversaries to the massive dissemination of influence campaigns thanks to a gigantic network of fake accounts on social networks.
Everything, or almost, is false in this sequence broadcast by BFM-TV on the night of December 16 to 17, 2022: the yacht builders did not appeal to Prince Albert, 10,000 jobs are not threatened by the sanctions against Russia. This is, in fact, the visible part of a complex disinformation campaign, born of a settling of accounts between yachting companies against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. A file in which oligarchs close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a YouTuber specializing in luxury boats, fake demonstrations in London and Monaco, several hundred fake profiles on social networks… and Mr. M’Barki meet.
After an internal investigation by the news channel launched in mid-January following requests from the World and Radio France, the journalist admitted to having agreed to read this text and others on the air, to “to serve” to an acquaintance.
Smear campaign of a youtuber
Broadcast late at night, these BFM-TV sequences have had a second life on social networks, where a network of avatars controlled by Team Jorge, like a certain Iris Cook on Twitter, December 18, 2022Or by Gabe Barnhoorn, the next day. These sometimes elaborate Twitter or Facebook accounts, English and French, show a keen interest in the yachting sector and were partly created for the occasion, just before the start of the campaign. Some pretend to be employees of the sector and lament the employees who will lose their jobs “because of sanctions that the oligarchs don’t care about”when another poses as an investigative journalist who does not exist.
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