Malaysian politics among subjects of Israeli firm’s disinformation business to sway polls
The report did not state if any role had been played to influence the polls last year, but it did point to the 1MDB scandal at the heart of the previous general election in 2018, when the services of the Israeli firm were sought to spread disinformation to discredit a whistleblower.
(MalaysiaNow) – An undercover investigation reveals how the company’s services may have influenced elections through fake social media profiles and massive disinformation drives.
Malaysia is among scores of countries whose elections may have been affected by an Israeli company operating to influence polls worldwide by spreading disinformation, a joint investigation by journalists from several Western media outlets has revealed.
This comes less than three months after Malaysians voted at the 15th general election, resulting in an unprecedented hung parliament in a political impasse which ended with Pakatan Harapan’s Anwar Ibrahim being named as prime minister.
The report did not state if any role had been played to influence the polls last year, but it did point to the 1MDB scandal at the heart of the previous general election in 2018, when the services of the Israeli firm were sought to spread disinformation to discredit a whistleblower.
French daily Le Monde, one of 30 news organisations which participated in the investigation, said “Team Jorge” was engaged by “unknown clients” to run a disinformation campaign against Xavier Justo, the Swiss banker whose revelations in 2015 led to the uncovering of the 1MDB scandal.
The corruption scandal was largely blamed for the election defeat of then prime minister Najib Razak in 2018.
According to Le Monde, the campaign to discredit Justo surfaced at the end of 2020, with his replication on a website and a YouTube channel where he was presented as an untrustworthy individual who was out to make money.
“The website and the YouTube channel were then widely distributed on social media, by the network of avatars of Team Jorge, as part of a larger operation of defamation, calling Justo a thief, a drug addict, a blackmailer,” the paper said, adding that the real goal of the campaign was unclear.
