EU DisinfoLab Profile picture
Feb 23, 2023 13 tweets 7 min read Read on X
In addition to #BadSources, @Knack & @lesoir published stories on a Brussels-based think tank, following up on our previous work and leads. They confirm that the South Asia Democratic Forum received substantial funding from offshore & opaque organisations.
knack.be/nieuws/storyki…
ICYMI, the SADF is one of the Brussels stakeholders depicted in our EP Today and Indian Chronicles reports. We showed that its creation was directly tied to the Srivastava Group's efforts to influence policymakers in Brussels.
@lesoir sums it up here: lesoir.be/496897/article…
So, who are the SADF funders? Based on information collected by @Knack, the SADF had received funding from the 'European Foundation for International Development', 'Transworld Partners Ltd' and 'Euro Corporation Ltd', amongst others.
When asked who was behind these obscure funding sources, Paulo Casaca, the SADF Director and a former MEP, was unable to answer. Therefore, EU DisinfoLab investigated further.
Let's start with the 'European Foundation for International Development' (EFID) in Luxemburg. We identified Gopal M., born in August 1970, living in New Delhi, India, as the EFID's co-founder. We couldn't find traces of any website or visible activities. gd.lu/rcsl/2vk1Cz
Regarding 'Euro Corporation Ltd', we found a UK-based company chaired by an Indian individual named Gopal Gopal, also born in August 1970.

…te.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/073252…
And when we looked into 'Transworld Partners Ltd', guess who we found? Our dear friend Gopal, still registered at the same address in Delhi.
So, if you want to win "Who wants to be a millionaire", you better know the answer to this question:
Jokes aside, facts are facts, and they are what they are: the SADF has been extensively funded by Indian stakeholders based in Delhi, via organisations based in the UK, Hong Kong and Luxemburg.
After #Qatargate, Roberta Metsola promised that "there will be no sweeping under the carpet". We would like to remind her and the EU institutions that we had exposed and warned about the SADF in 2019 and 2020, and that nothing was done.
Meanwhile, the SADF continued its operations including hosting events with EU institutions' staff – as if it was all fine.
The cost of inaction is higher than we often think it is, as it legitimises such abnormal behaviours and feeds the growing discredit of good-faith NGOs.
We hope that, this time, the facts we are presenting will eventually lead to some concrete action.
Up to you @Europarl_EN @EU_EEAS @EU_Commission @EP_Democracy
Find out more about our #BadSources investigation ⬇️

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More from @DisinfoEU

Feb 23, 2023
#BadSources - our latest investigation into how Indian news agency ANI repeatedly quoted non-existent bloggers, experts, journalists and think tanks spreading anti-Pakistan/China narratives in India. 🧵1/N

theBS.online
#BadSources #StoryKillers
To ease your reading, we've shortened ANI's #BadSources to BS in this thread. 2/N
It all started when we took another look at IFFRAS, a Canada-based think tank we had already exposed in our previous #IndianChronicles investigations. 3/N
Read 15 tweets
Sep 27, 2022
#DOPPELGANGER: How Russia-based actors cloned legitimate media outlets from multiple countries (🇩🇪🇬🇧🇫🇷🇮🇹🇱🇻🇺🇦) to spread disinformation designed to undermine the support for Ukraine.

Our last investigation: doppelganger.ltd
This independent investigation is solely based on open-source information and is built upon the first leads from @tonline. We also would also like to thank @AFPfaktencheck for reaching out to us.

t-online.de/nachrichten/de…
The - still ongoing - information operation aims at:
Read 22 tweets
Sep 1, 2021
Today, the EU DisinfoLab publishes an Open Letter signed by over 50 leading experts on disinformation calling on EU policy-makers to tackle disinformation head-on in the Digital Services Act 👇disinfo.eu/advocacy/open-…
Co-signatories include researchers, educators, journalists, academics, digital rights & democracy activists, campaigners against hate speech and online gender-based violence. We have organisations from across the 🇪🇺, including: 🇫🇷🇩🇪🇫🇮🇧🇪🇳🇱🇭🇺🇱🇹🇨🇿🇸🇰🇸🇮🇵🇱🇬🇷🇨🇾🇲🇹🇧🇬🇭🇷 & beyond 🇬🇧🇨🇭🇺🇸🇵🇰🇵🇭
There is a tendency in Brussels to frame the question of legislating on disinformation as a trade-off between free expression or authoritarian control of our online environment. But there is a middle ground.
Read 6 tweets
May 12, 2021
#Thread: How YouTube’s inaction facilitated the spread of the French COVID-19 conspiracy documentary Hold-up, the Plandemic “à la française”.
The French COVID-19 conspiracy movie Hold-up was released on 11 November 2020 & started to circulate on YouTube that same day. French fact-checker AFP Factuel flagged in Hold-Up more than 30 misleading or false claims linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2/n
We identified 14 viral occurrences of the Hold-up documentary on YouTube, which generated a total of more than 4.5 million views on the platform. 3/n
Read 12 tweets
Jan 25, 2021
📢Today we release our publication "The Many Faces Fighting #Disinformation", a panorama of innovative, multidisciplinary actors safeguarding our information ecosystem. We wanted to understand their successes and their challenges. (1/19)

▶️disinfo.eu/manyfaces
cc @fnfeurope The Many Faces Fighting Dis...
They are rising to the #disinformation challenge with new types of expertise, like #OSINT, crowdsourcing, and data activism. They explore unusual partnerships and experiment with innovative techniques. This is a new sector taking shape. (2/19) Image
They also face novel challenges and risks. Despite their critical role in our information ecosystem, many civil society actors in this space struggle to make their voices heard. Their security and sustainability are not assured. (3/19) Image
Read 19 tweets
Jan 20, 2021
New research: Disinformation that wrongly links COVID-19 and 5G technology often remain undetected. @DisinfoEU researcher @NetoSessa examines moderation shortcomings on Twitter and YouTube. Thread ⬇️ (1/8)
disinfo.eu/publications/5…
As the pandemic unfolded, @Twitter and @YouTube vowed to remove content that breached their policy guidelines. They pledged to provide the community with reliable and real-time information, in particular regarding disinformation linking 5G technology to the coronavirus. (2/8)
However, we still notice significant time delays and discrepancies in their enforcement. This leads to false information remaining on these platforms for months before it gets labelled or removed (3/8)
Read 8 tweets

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