Romania has solid proof of Russian involvement in presidential campaign, president says

President Nicusor Dan said that Romanian authorities finally have solid proof of Russian involvement in Romania’s cancelled 2024 presidential elections. He also estimated that far-right candidate Călin Georgescu benefited from EUR 20 million in dark money.

Dan argued that authorities did not have proof that Russia interfered through advertising in the electoral campaign until theProsecutor’s Office report. The latter showed that accounts and companies from Russia were used in the disinformation process.

“We now have proof of the fact that there were several sites that acted so that their advertising would reach a large number of people. Accounts and companies from Russia were used in this disinformation process, and I will inform our partners,” the president also said, cited byNews.ro.

Nevertheless, authorities in Romania do not have all the data yet.

“We were caught off guard by the scale and technological speed of the operation that was carried out for Călin Georgescu. Many websites used Russian advertising companies to reach a large number of people. For disinformation, accounts and companies from Russia were used. We still need a few months to have the complete picture,” the president explained.

Aside from online disinformation, the president estimated that Călin Georgescu’s electoral campaign could have benefited from funding worth EUR 20 million, although prosecutors have data regarding EUR 1 million paid by businessman Bogdan Peschir. Officially, Georgescu's campaign had declared zero funding for the 2024 presidential campaign.

In addition, the head of state suspects that behind Georgescu were people involved in Romanian corruption of the 1990s – 2000s.

“I said this as an intuition. To get from intuition to evidence, you have to trace the circuit of some money that moved, maybe through cryptocurrencies, maybe through tax havens. This is difficult and takes time,” the head of state also declared.

This is not the first time that president Dan has hinted at Georgescu's behind-the-scenes connections and dark money. During an interview given last week, he referred to alocal "network" that backed the far-right pro-Russian candidate. The former recently hinted at a