Clandestine Israel Company Influenced Dozens of Elections, Investigation Finds

A clandestine company Israeli electoral manipulation in social networks was used to influence dozens of elections in the worldespecially in Africa, but also in other cases in Mexico and Spain, according to a group of investigative journalists.

The company, without legal existence, called “Team Jorge” by journalists, as a result of the pseudonym of one of its managers, Tal Hanan, is made up of former members of the Israeli security services, according to information revealed on Wednesday by the Forbidden Stories collective. .

Three journalists from the group posed as possible clients to collect information for several months about “Team Jorge”. The structure claims to have “intervened in 33 electoral campaigns at the presidential level”reported Radio France, where one of the infiltrated journalists works.

Of this 33 campaigns, another official told the infiltrators, “two thirds (took place) in Anglophone and French-speaking Africa, 27 were successful.” In Mexicothe company would have intervened in favor of Tomás Zerón, a former Mexican official investigated for the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, says the Forbidden Stories website.

Israel bombs Hamas underground compound in Gaza

Zerón, head of the Criminal Investigation Agency from 2013 to 2016, is accused of kidnapping, torture and manipulation of evidence in the case of the disappearance of the young people from Ayotzinapa (Guerrero state). He involved in the acquisition of the program Pegasus espionage by the Mexican authoritiesZeron is currently a fugitive in Israel, which rejects his extradition.

And in Spain“Team George” would have intervened in the referendumnot recognized by the Spanish government, organized by the Catalan separatists in 2014, adds Radio France.

Almost 40,000 fake profiles

For your activities, the company developed “for six years a digital platform”, AIMS, which allowed it to create countless fake accounts on social networks and above all, activate and feed them, explains the collective.

At the beginning of January 2023, the system exploited 39,213 false profiles, “consultable in a kind of catalogue”. In it there are “avatars of all ethnicities, nationalities, genders, single or in a couple… Their faces are portraits of real people taken from the internet, and their patronymics, the combination of thousands of surnames and first names stored in a database ”, according to Radio France.

“To demonstrate the effectiveness of one of his tools, Jorge took control of the messaging systems of several high-level African officials. ‘We’re in,’ he told reporters who saw two Gmail accounts, a Google Drive and a directory, as well as a series of Telegram accounts, ”indicates Forbidden Stories.

Once infiltrated into the systems, Jorge could “impersonate the owner and have exchanges with his contacts”, add the collective. The company also can carry out operations to put pressure on important people in decision-making processes or on journalistson behalf of its clients.

Forbidden Stories (“forbidden stories”) is a network of investigative journalists created in 2017. It is this consortium that uncovered the scandal of the Israeli spy program Pegasus in 2021. (YO)