Bucharest General Mayor and presidential hopeful Nicusor Dan announced that he has notified the responsible Romanian and European institutions as well as the social media platforms about the fact that he is no longer able to use his social media accounts, which have been „invaded” in recent days by hundreds of thousands of fake accounts.

Speaking on Wednesday in a press conference held at his campaign headquarters, Nicusor Dan said: „Where is the Romanian state? The November elections were canceled because the election result was hijacked through cyber means. And obviously, Romania’s image was harmed a lot. And we had some promises from the Romanian state that this situation would not happen again. Yet here we are, in the situation where for already one day I have been unable to use my social media accounts, because they are invaded by hundreds of thousands of fake accounts,” Nicusor Dan argued.

He explained that he had 70,000 followers on Instagram, but that in just two days their number soared to 180,000, whereas shares from his Facebook account skyrocketed from a normal 600-800 to 100,000 shares. The same on TikTok, the surge was from 400-600 shares to 100,000 now.

Also, he specified that on all three platforms there are tens of thousands of comments „in a very approximate Romanian language”, made from accounts in Vietnam, Pakistan, Brazil, India, Indonesia.

„The consequence? One – it’s a day now that we have no longer been campaigning. Two – we are at maximum risk that the platform operators will notice this unusual activity and shut down these accounts,” the mayor said.

He mentioned that he filed complaints with Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau, the Permanent Electoral Authority, the National Communications Administration and Regulation Authority, the Ministry of the Interior, the National Cybersecurity Directorate and the Prosecutor’s Office, as well as with the European institutions – DG CONNECT, the European Commission’s Representation in Romania, StratCom and the European Network of Election Monitoring Organisations.

At the same time, notifications were sent to the official representatives of the Meta and TikTok platforms. Nicusor Dan mentioned that he trusts the representatives of European companies and institutions more than their Romanian peers, „which should have been prepared” for this type of activity. Dan stressed that he has „no suspicion” about who initiated this action, but wants „state institutions to do their duty.”

AGERPRES