{"id":1976,"date":"2024-10-04T13:00:17","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/?p=1976"},"modified":"2024-10-04T13:00:17","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T13:00:17","slug":"romanian-presidential-hopeful-mircea-geoana-in-hot-water-after-media-investigation-alleges-associates-russian-ties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/?p=1976","title":{"rendered":"Romanian presidential hopeful Mircea Geoan\u0103 in hot water after media investigation alleges associate\u2019s Russian ties"},"content":{"rendered":"

Romania\u2019s presidential candidate Mircea Geoan\u0103<\/strong>, former NATO Deputy Secretary General, claimed he is subject to a media lynching campaign after an investigative report drafted by Context.ro revealed that one of his former active supporters, Rare\u0219 M\u0103nescu, set up a firm with a Russian partner and propagandist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On September 11, the former NATO official Mircea Geoan\u0103 officially began<\/a> his campaign for president, after topping the polls for months before. \u201cWe are not perfect. I am not perfect. But you know what we can do? We can work. We can roll up our sleeves and build a better country,” Geoan\u0103 says in his presidential campaign video.<\/p>\n

On October 1, journalists at Context.ro published an investigation<\/a> showing how Rare\u0219 M\u0103nescu, a former Liberal mayor, registered a company with Russian businessman Aleksei Kozlov, also known as Alex Krepchinsky, while he was part of Mircea Geoan\u0103’s campaign team. Journalists made the allegation after they obtained an email from the internal servers of the Geoan\u0103 campaign in which M\u0103nescu is named head of the campaigning efforts in Bucharest.<\/p>\n

Rare\u0219 M\u0103nescu\u2019s Russian partner is also a blogger who, after the 2014 invasion of Crimea, published pro-Russian content. M\u0103nescu refused to answer questions regarding his business partner’s propaganda activities in Ukraine.\u00a0He briefly stated that he left Geoan\u0103’s campaign “five months ago”, that is, in May. The journalistic investigation shows a number of ramifications that even lead to a mercenary who fought in Donbas on the side of the Russians.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is quite shocking that NATO would overlook things like this when appointing people to such senior roles. And Romanian voters should bear this in mind when casting their ballots next month,\u201d said Russian businessman-turned-dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, sharing the investigation on X.<\/p>\n

He went on in subsequent posts, arguing that while Geoan\u0103 speaks publicly against Russia, he had ties to Moscow in the past, referencing the candidate\u2019s unannounced trip to the Russian capital back in 2009.\u00a0Mircea Geoan\u0103 has faced such allegations during the current campaign, noting that in those years the new Russian president Medvedev, now a staunch ally of Putin and one of the biggest supporters of the war in Ukraine, showed more openness to the West. The trip, he says<\/a>, was part of a normal dialog between states.<\/p>\n

The investigation, in turn, is “an FSB operation,” Mircea Geoan\u0103 claimed speaking for Digi24<\/a>, adding that he learned about M\u0103nescu’s connections with the Russians from the media. According to Geoan\u0103, the investigation was conducted \u201cunder the sponsorship and funding of oligarch Khodorkovsky.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also added that Attila Biro, one of the Context.ro journalists that published the investigation into M\u0103nescu, was \u201cpart of the operation to attempt to assassinate the Bulgarian Prosecutor General.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis type of kompromat generated and directed from Moscow is a disinformation operation that is part of the hybrid warfare arsenal that the Russian Federation is deploying against Western democracies. This is what we are talking about today in Romania,” said Geoan\u0103.<\/p>\n

Biro responded, noting that Context.ro is not and has never been funded by Khodorkovsky, but through grants from the European Commission.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Geoan\u0103 has repeated a conspiracy theory and gross fake news that has been condemned by the Organized Crime and Reporting Project network. The reality is that journalists at Context.ro have investigated one of the largest financial fraud operations amounting to several hundred million euros. While we were investigating this operation, a series of publications spreading fake news in Bulgaria invented this theory related to the former Bulgarian Prosecutor General,” said Attila Biro.<\/p>\n

Mircea Geoan\u0103\u2019s campaign has been under fire in recent weeks. Last month, however, Inscop Research released a poll that indicated him as the leading candidate in the race for president. According to Inscop, Geoan\u0103 (independent) is polling at 21.4% in voting intentions for the first round of the presidential elections, followed closely by prime minister and Social Democrat (PSD) leader Marcel Ciolacu at 20.3%.<\/p>\n

A more recent poll<\/a>, conducted before the controversy regarding Manescu, reversed the hierarchy, placing the prime minister in first place.<\/p>\n

radu@romania-insider.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

(Photo source: Mircea Geoana on Facebook)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Romania\u2019s presidential candidate Mircea Geoan\u0103, former NATO Deputy Secretary General, claimed he is subject to a media lynching campaign after an investigative report drafted by Context.ro revealed that one of his former active supporters, Rare\u0219 M\u0103nescu, set up a firm with a Russian partner and propagandist.\u00a0 On September 11, the former NATO official Mircea Geoan\u0103 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}