American department of Russian 'troll factory' found in Africa

Social networks Facebook and Twitter have deleted more than 200 fresh pages and accounts of the Internet Research Agency, also known as the “troll factory,” reports Air force.

Photo: Shutterstock

This organization has already tried to influence the US presidential elections in 2016, for which the country's authorities put it on the sanctions list. Then the American department of the “factory” was located in St. Petersburg, but now, according to social networks, two new offices have appeared - in Ghana and Nigeria.

Facebook said it had deleted 49 public and 85 personal pages on the social network of the same name. The company removed another 69 accounts from its Instagram application. Mainly accounts published news about the United States. Their main topics were the history of the black population of the United States, the problems of the LGBT community, news and rumors about celebrities.

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Another 71 accounts were removed by Twitter. The social network said the accounts were “sowing discord by engaging in public discussion of issues related to race and civil rights.”

American authorities believe that the “troll factory” is run by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin. He is known in the media as “Putin’s chef” and also as the owner of the private military company Wagner. In 2018, the BBC managed to find a connection between Prigozhin’s companies and this PMC, present in Libya, the Central African Republic and other African countries.

Now it has become known that Prigozhin could open branches of his “troll factory” in Africa.

CNN correspondents visited the capital of Ghana, Accra, and discovered a building in which trolls lived and worked. It was rented by a small non-governmental organization, Eliminating Barriers for the Liberation of Africa (EBLA) - its name can be translated into Russian as “destroying barriers to the liberation of Africa.” Its leader, Seth Wiredu, lived in Russia for a long time and speaks Russian. EBLA borrowed photos for its official website from photo banks; the file names contained Cyrillic characters.

According to an anonymous CNN source at the Ghanaian branch of the “factory,” their workday began in the afternoon and continued until late at night, meaning that the posting times were based on US time zones. According to Facebook, more than 65% of the followers of the fake pages lived in America.

Many of the “factory” employees lived in the same building or nearby, in apartments rented for them. A CNN source claims: the employees had no idea that they were working for Russia, and received topics for posts through a secret chat on Telegram.

In February 2020, Ghanaian authorities suspected illegal cyber activity at a branch of the “factory” and conducted a raid there. Less is known about the Nigerian branch, but its existence is confirmed by job postings similar to those posted for the Ghanaian branch of the "factory".

Ben Nimmo, director of research projects for the independent Graphika platform, believes that the open network was in the process of building up a loyal audience. Many accounts simply reposted viral memes and popular non-policy posts.

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Nimmo emphasizes that at the time the network was disclosed, it was impossible to talk about its specific focus on the US presidential elections scheduled for November 3, 2020. However, according to the researcher, this story may provide an answer to those wondering “whether Russia is going to interfere in the American elections again.”

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