Journalists at Snoop.ro were recently threatened for exposing a network of ads and news created with Russian funds to back Romanian presidential candidate C\u0103lin Georgescu.<\/p>\n
Georgescu, who came seemingly out of nowhere and claimed the first place in the initial round of the presidential elections, has always claimed to have conducted his campaign with virtually no money.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Snoop.ro, however, showed how Russian money, paid for seemingly benign ads about natural medicine and saint-related news, ended up influencing voters. As a result, the journalists were threatened by supporters of the candidate, who claim to know everything about the \u201ctroublemakers\u201d and say that they will be punished once Georgescu takes power.<\/p>\n
Specifically, journalist Victor Ilie was threatened<\/a> by the leaders of the United Tracia Organization, who support the candidate C\u0103lin Georgescu<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou are all documented, don\u2019t you understand that we know everything about you? Everything! Everything, including where you go, what you do, and what you eat, everything. We know everything. Where your money comes from and where you go,\u201d Bruno Mih\u0103ilescu, one of the heads of the organization, told the journalist.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI have your number, and I\u2019ll track you through your IP,\u201d the businessman told Ilie.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy did the question about the Russian Embassy bother you, given that you\u2019ve been there several times? With Mr. Rotariu, with Ms. \u0218o\u0219oac\u0103?\u201d the journalist responded.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the Russian Embassy? So what? Was I the only one there? I don\u2019t think you know what you\u2019re getting into. Listen to what I\u2019m saying. I suggest you stop now while you still have the chance,”\u00a0Mih\u0103ilescu said in reply.<\/p>\n Bruno Mih\u0103ilescu, one of the founders of the United Tracia movement and a businessman, is a colleague of Mugurel Calistrat Atudorei on the Global News television show. Frequent guests of their program include C\u0103lin Georgescu. Atudorei, in turn, was a parliamentary candidate for far-right party SOS Romania in the Chamber of Deputies. The party is led by another extremist politician believed to have ties with Russia, Diana Sosoaca<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to an investigation by PressOne, another member of United Tracia is Florin Colceag, SOS’s proposal for the position of Minister of Education in a potential minority government.<\/p>\n In a previous investigation<\/a>, Snoop.ro has shown how between 2016 and 2024, AdNow, a digital advertising company with ties to the Kremlin, paid money to websites of television networks like RTV and Realitatea Plus, conspiracy influencers, and far-right content publications, according to financial documents obtained by the journalists. Many other payments were made via cryptocurrencies or non-transparent fintech applications like PayPal or Wirecard, which AdNow uses, the investigation reveals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from media investigations, reports provided by the Romanian intelligence services and recently declassified<\/a> by the Presidential Administration show how\u00a0a “candidate for the presidential elections benefited from a massive exposure due to the preferential treatment that the TikTok platform granted him by not marking him as a political candidate.”<\/p>\n radu@romania-insider.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n (Photo source:\u00a0Ilkin Guliyev<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Dreamstime.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Journalists at Snoop.ro were recently threatened for exposing a network of ads and news created with Russian funds to back Romanian presidential candidate C\u0103lin Georgescu. Georgescu, who came seemingly out of nowhere and claimed the first place in the initial round of the presidential elections, has always claimed to have conducted his campaign with virtually […]<\/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-2884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884","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=2884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}