{"id":34573,"date":"2026-06-12T04:13:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T04:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/34573\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T04:13:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T04:13:34","slug":"israeli-firm-blackcore-suspected-of-election-interference-in-nyc-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/34573\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli firm BlackCore suspected of election interference in NYC, Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Israeli firm BlackCore, suspected of interfering in France&#8217;s local elections in March, is also suspected of meddling in elections in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/international\/article-898805\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York City<\/a> and Scotland, and operating in Angola and Togo, the head of France&#8217;s disinformation detection service Viginum said on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Reuters reported that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/international\/article-896109\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">French authorities suspected BlackCore<\/a> was behind an online smear campaign targeting three candidates from the hard-left France Unbowed party (LFI) ahead of municipal elections in March this year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This modus operandi was not limited to municipal elections in France,&#8221; the head of Viginum, Marc-Antoine Brillant, said. &#8220;It also appears to have been used to carry out foreign digital interference operations in other countries or regions, such as Angola, Togo, the elections in Scotland, and the 2025 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/international\/article-899089\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">municipal election in New York<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">French authorities opened a probe into the campaign after coming under mounting pressure to provide answers over incidents that raised awkward questions about the security of French elections.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Suspected crimes included foreign espionage, election fraud carried out with false news or fraudulent maneuvers, and online advocacy of terrorism, they said.<\/p>\n<p>The operation under investigation targeted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/international\/article-890740\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marseille mayoral candidate<\/a> S\u00e9bastien Delogu, Toulouse contender Fran\u00e7ois Piquemal, and their Roubaix counterpart David Guiraud, according to French authorities and the candidates themselves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Their party is regularly accused of antisemitism by some Jewish community \u200cleaders and political \u2060rivals &#8211; claims it denies &#8211; while many business figures fret about its high tax-and-spend policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israeli firm BlackCore, suspected of interfering in France&#8217;s local elections in March, is also suspected of meddling in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[375,5,5594,9918,66],"class_list":["post-34573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-elections","tag-france","tag-new-york-city","tag-scotland","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}