An investigation by an international team of 100 journalists revealed yesterday that the case against BFMTV host Rashid Mubaraki, accused of being influenced by outside influences, is linked to a massive disinformation project run by an Israeli company. “There is no doubt that NBFM is the victim of this story,” news network CEO Marc-Olivier Vougel told France Inter after an internal investigation was launched and the 54-year-old journalist was suspended. an investigation conducted by the Forbidden Stories group of journalists, in which the investigative arm of Le Monde newspaper and Radio France participated on behalf of France, the case relates to a massive disinformation project run by an Israeli company that sells their services around the world. Investigative journalists were able to interview an employee of this cell in Israel, called “Team Jorge”. And he assured them, backing it up with a presentation in front of them, that he could automatically create fake accounts on the Internet, write content on social networks, or hack email or accounts on the Telegram app to influence, among other things, election campaigns. .
In the case of Mubaraki, on the BFM channel, the news that was broadcast on the air concerned wealthy Russians close to power, as well as Qatar, Sudan, Cameroon and Western Sahara “at the expense of foreign agents”, according to the investigation.
The first news channel in France launched an internal investigation in January last year in connection with suspicions against Rashid Mubaraki.
Voegele said that Mobarchi “could have asked for (some) photos at the last moment” to clarify the news “when the editor-in-chief was busy doing something else and broadcasting his entire publication.”