Facebook allows the sanctioned Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor to place ads

The ads, featuring politician and convicted fraudster Ilan Shor, were eventually removed from Facebook, but not before being viewed by millions in Moldova, a small nation of about 2.6 million people sandwiched between Romania and war-torn Ukraine.

To capitalize on anger over inflation and soaring fuel prices, Shor’s political party salaried posts targeted the government of pro-Western President Maia Sandu, who earlier this week detailed what she described as a Russian conspiracy to overthrow her government using outside saboteurs .

“Attempts at destabilization are a reality and pose a real challenge to our institutions,” Sandu said Thursday as she sworn in a new government led by pro-Western Prime Minister Dorin Recean, her former defense and security adviser. “We need decisive steps to strengthen the security of the country.”

The ads show how Russia and its allies have exploited flaws in social media platforms — like Facebook, many of which are run by US companies — to spread propaganda and disinformation that is weaponizing economic and social insecurity to end the to undermine governments in Eastern Europe.

According to Dorin Frasineau, a foreign policy adviser to former Moldovan Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita, whose resignation led to its creation, Shor’s ads have helped fuel angry anti-government protests and appear aimed at destabilizing Moldova and bringing it back into Russia’s sphere of influence of the new one government on Thursday.

“Even though he’s on the US sanctions list, I still see sponsored ads on Facebook,” Frasineau said, saying he spotted what he believes are fake accounts sharing the posts this week. He said the Moldovan government was unsuccessful in getting any answers from Facebook. “We spoke to Facebook, but it’s very difficult because there is no specific person, no contact.”

The sanctions list rules prohibit US companies from conducting financial transactions with publicly traded individuals and groups. The US Treasury Department, which administers the sanctions program, declined to comment publicly when asked about the allegations.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, said it removed the posts as soon as it found them.

“When Ilan Shor and the Shor Party were placed on the US sanctions list, we took action against their known accounts,” a company spokesman said. “When we identified new linked accounts, we took action on those as well. We comply with US sanctions laws and will continue to work to identify and enforce fake accounts and Pages that violate our policies.”

Meta, which recently announced large-scale layoffs, did not respond to questions about the size of its workforce in Moldova or the number of employees who speak Moldova’s languages. Like many large US-based tech companies, Meta sometimes had trouble moderating content in languages ​​other than English.

The ads were identified by researchers from Reset, a London-based non-profit organization that researches the impact of social media on democracy and shared its findings with The Associated Press. Felix Kartte, a senior adviser at Reset, said Meta’s response to disinformation and propaganda in Moldova could have far-reaching implications for European security.

“Their platforms continue to be armed by the Kremlin and Russian intelligence agencies, and because of the company’s inaction, the US and Europe risk losing a key ally in the region,” said Kartte, who is based in Berlin.

Nine different paid posts by the Shor party were leaked on Facebook after the US imposed sanctions. Most were removed within a week of the sanctions being announced, although Shor bought another paying job in January, two months after he was sanctioned. All were clearly identifiable by Shor’s name.

Posts can be found in Facebook’s online advertising library, which contains a searchable catalogue.

The library confirms that the ads by Shor and his party were viewed millions of times before they were eventually removed.

The last ad, which was removed a month ago, was pulled because it didn’t include a disclaimer about the ad’s sponsor, according to a note attached to one of the videos in the library. The library does not mention the sanctions.

The ads weren’t a moneymaker for Meta, as they only generated about $15,000 in revenue, a pittance for a company that made $4.65 billion last quarter.

Nonetheless, they were effective. An ad that ran on Facebook for just two days – October 29-30 – has been viewed more than a million times in Moldova. In the post, which cost Shor’s party less than $100 to upload, the oligarch accused Sandu’s government of corruption and kleptocracy.

“You and I have to rip them out of their offices by the ears and throw them out of our country like evil spirits,” Shor tells the audience.

Shor, 35, is an Israeli-born Moldovan oligarch who leads the populist, pro-Russian Shor Party. Shor, currently in exile in Israel, is implicated in a $1 billion theft from Moldovan banks in 2014; is accused of bribery to secure his post as chairman of a Moldovan bank and was included on a US Treasury Department sanctions list in October as a champion of Russian interests.

The US says Shor worked with “corrupt oligarchs and Moscow-based organizations to create political unrest in Moldova” and undermined the country’s bid to join the EU. The sanctions list also names the Shor party and Shor’s wife, a Russian pop star. The United Kingdom also put Shor on a sanctions list last December.

Last fall, Moldova was rocked by a series of anti-government protests initiated by the Shor Party, with thousands taking to the streets in the capital Chisinau amid soaring inflation and an acute energy crisis after Russia announced the Moldova had reduced gas supplies.

Many of the protesters called for snap elections and called for Sandu’s resignation.

Around the same time, the Moldovan government submitted a motion to the country’s constitutional court to declare the Shor party illegal, a case that is still pending. Moldova’s anti-corruption prosecutor’s office also launched an investigation into the financing of the protests, which prosecutors said involved at least some Russian money.

On Monday, Sandu went public with an alleged conspiracy by Moscow to overthrow the government with external saboteurs, “make the nation available to Russia” and derail it from its course to one day join the EU.

Sandu said the alleged Russian plot involves attacks on government buildings, kidnappings and other violent actions by saboteur groups. Russia has since firmly denied these claims.

Moldova, once part of the Soviet Union, declared its independence in 1991. In recent years, the country has lurched from one political crisis to the next, often torn between pro-Russian and pro-Western sentiments.

But in 2021, after decades of largely oligarchic power structures and various pro-Russian leaders, Moldovans elected a pro-Western, pro-European government that set them on a more distinctly Western trajectory. In June, Moldova was granted EU candidate status on the same day as Ukraine.

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McGrath reported from Sighisoara, Romania.