Outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused Israeli cyber-intelligence company BlackCore of executing a massive digital disinformation campaign to manipulate the outcome of the country’s recent presidential elections, Anadolu reports.
The accusation was made on Friday following a razor-thin victory by challenger Abelardo de la Espriella, a criminal defense attorney openly endorsed by US President Donald Trump. De la Espriella won the June 21 runoff election by a margin of less than 1% over the ruling party’s candidate, Ivan Cepeda.
Petro wrote on US social media platform X that BlackCore deployed hundreds of thousands of automated accounts to distort public perception in the run-up to the vote.
“BlackCore, the Israeli company, deployed 500,000 bots—fake profiles—to manipulate the Colombian electorate with millions of lies about Ivan and me,” Petro said.
Describing the alleged interference as “the hardest blow to national sovereignty since the Spanish reconquest,” Petro announced a week ago that he would refuse to recognize “the legitimacy of the incoming government.” The outgoing leader has subsequently called on his supporters to launch a nationwide mobilization on July 20.
