President Maia Sandu said the video in which she is shown near Ian Shor is a gross deepfake. She said she never had any meeting or discussion with Shor, while the goal of the fake video is to discredit her. Sandu noted the rapid developments in the ICT sector require the toughening up of the legislation, IPN reports.
Maia Sandu stated the video in which she appears near Ilan Shor, which was presented by JurnalTV channel, is an awkward attempt to make the people believe that she took money from the fugitive politician.
“I never discussed or met with Ilan Shor. Regrettably, these methods of cheating the people develop. It is a deepfake. It is an attempt to present a fake and make it hard for the people to differentiate between lie and truth. The new technologies, besides the multiple benefits they offer, come also with risks. However, the resuts of the presidential and snap parliamentary elections show that there is particular immunity to these fakes in the Republic of Moldova,” Maia Sandu stated in the talk show “Shadow Cabinet” on JurnalTV channel.
She noted that disinformation and propaganda expand in the Republic of Moldova and the legislations should be amended by introducing harsh penalties so as to protect the citizens from false information.
“We need harsher legislation in the fight against fakes. We must also fight fakes on TV and on the Internet as these spread at a very high speed. When the corruption schemes are stopped, the armies of trolls will disappear. A lot of money is needed to maintain this machinery. These troll factories are not financed with honestly earned money. When corruption is rooted out, there will be no possibilities of financing disinformation,” stated Maia Sandu.
JurnalTV presented evidence according to which Veaceslav Platon and Ilan Shor intended to discredit President Maia Sandu by launching a fake video in which President Sandu is shown to receive an envelope from the fugitive MP. According to journalists of the channel, Veaceslav Platon created a real network of trolls paid with large sums of money, whose task was to discredit Maia Sandu in the campaign prior to the snap parliamentary elections of July 11. The controversial businessman said the video was a fake and threatened journalist Alex Cozer, during whose program the video was shown, with legal action.
