Israeli Disinformation Firm Linked to BFMTV Presenter Scandal, Investigation Reveals

During a meeting with a manager of this office in Israel, designated under the name "Team Jorge", the investigative journalists were able to obtain valuable information. According to the investigation consortium, which includes the investigation cell of Radio France and Le Monde, the news items broadcast on the BFMTV news channel that did not go through the official validation channels "were related to Russian oligarchs, Qatar, Sudan, Cameroon, or even the Western Sahara and would have been provided turnkey for the account of foreign clients," reports Le Parisien.

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BFMTV blames its star presenter for having broadcast information, in particular on an economic forum between Morocco and Spain in Dakhla, in the Sahara, or threatened jobs on the Côte d’Azur due to the disappearance of Russian oligarchs after the start of the war in Ukraine. Since January, the continuous news channel has put Rachid M’Barki on leave and opened an internal investigation. The presenter "arranged to ask (for) images at the last minute" to illustrate the news items, "once the editor-in-chief was taken on another slot and had validated the entire newspaper," estimates Marc-Olivier Fogiel, general manager of the channel.

The 54-year-old journalist had, at the beginning of this affair, assured that he had only broadcast content that he simply found "interesting" to give to the viewers. But in a statement to the Politico website, a change of tone. M’Barki had acknowledged having "used information that came to me from informants" and which did not "necessarily follow the usual editorial process". And to continue: "They were all real and verified [...]. I don’t rule out anything, maybe I was fooled, I didn’t have the impression that it was the case or that I was participating in an operation of I don’t know what otherwise I wouldn’t have done it."