DISINFO: EU top diplomat Josep Borrell caught with millions in offshore deposits in Seychelles
SUMMARY
According to Spanish reports, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security, Josep Borrell, was caught maintaining offshore accounts in the Seychelles, with deposits totalling USD 3,000,000. He is said to have received 30 deposits of USD 100,000 each in the Seychelles since January 2022, totalling USD 3,000,000.
The specific funds are linked to a criminal organization that involves judges and Spanish politicians in a serious corruption case! According to the same information, an investigation is also being carried out against the former president of the Spanish government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the Minister of Defense of the Spanish government, Margarita Robles, for the same case.
RESPONSE
This disinformation is a new attempt to discredit EU HRVP Josep Borrell -a frequent target of pro-Kremlin disinformation- and the European Union in general by falsely accusing its top diplomat of corruption.
The claim is unsubstantiated. The “Spanish reports” mentioned in this disinformation story are a single Twitter thread from an anonymous account used to promote baseless conspiracy theories about politicians involved in child abuse and other scandals. No serious outlet in Spain has published or even suggested that this story may be true.
The so-called “documents” shown in the Twitter thread as “evidence” are unlikely to belong to any offshore society in the Seychelles as they are in Spanish, which is not a working language in that country. And in any case, the document refers to someone named “Borrell Centelles, J.”, while the HRVP actual name is Josep Borrell Fontelles, which points to suggest that they are most likely a clumsy forgery by a non-Spanish speaking malign actor.
The accusation coincides with the European Parliament investigating a high-level corruption case.
Smear campaigns is a frequent feature in the pro-Kremlin ecosystem and disinformation campaigns, as it is easy to blame others for Russia’s own problems to deflect attention, in this case corruption. According to Transparency International, Russia is in the position 29 among the most corrupt countries in the world, and the lowest scoring case in Europe.
We review the trend of slinging mud to see what sticks: here.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that calls for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine are an attempt to distract from EU corruption, that Russia jails people for high-level corruption whereas the US, UK and Europe don’t, that European aid to Ukraine is a corrupt scheme for Zelenskyy, or that the West is decadent, corrupt, rotten and has reached its final phase.