Romania’s presidential candidate Mircea Geoană, former NATO Deputy Secretary General, claimed he is subject to a media lynching campaign after an investigative report drafted by Context.ro revealed that one of his former active supporters, Rareș Mănescu, set up a firm with a Russian partner and propagandist. 

On September 11, the former NATO official Mircea Geoană officially began his campaign for president, after topping the polls for months before. “We are not perfect. I am not perfect. But you know what we can do? We can work. We can roll up our sleeves and build a better country," Geoană says in his presidential campaign video.

On October 1, journalists at Context.ro published an investigation showing how Rareș Mănescu, a former Liberal mayor, registered a company with Russian businessman Aleksei Kozlov, also known as Alex Krepchinsky, while he was part of Mircea Geoană's campaign team. Journalists made the allegation after they obtained an email from the internal servers of the Geoană campaign in which Mănescu is named head of the campaigning efforts in Bucharest.

Rareș Mănescu’s Russian partner is also a blogger who, after the 2014 invasion of Crimea, published pro-Russian content. Mănescu refused to answer questions regarding his business partner's propaganda activities in Ukraine. He briefly stated that he left Geoană's campaign "five months ago", that is, in May. The journalistic investigation shows a number of ramifications that even lead to a mercenary who fought in Donbas on the side of the Russians.

“It is quite shocking that NATO would overlook things like this when appointing people to such senior roles. And Romanian voters should bear this in mind when casting their ballots next month,” said Russian businessman-turned-dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, sharing the investigation on X.

He went on in subsequent posts, arguing that while Geoană speaks publicly against Russia, he had ties to Moscow in the past, referencing the candidate’s unannounced trip to the Russian capital back in 2009. Mircea Geoană has faced such allegations during the current campaign, noting that in those years the new Russian president Medvedev, now a staunch ally of Putin and one of the biggest supporters of the war in Ukraine, showed more openness to the West. The trip, he says, was part of a normal dialog between states.

The investigation, in turn, is "an FSB operation," Mircea Geoană claimed speaking for Digi24, adding that he learned about Mănescu's connections with the Russians from the media. According to Geoană, the investigation was conducted “under the sponsorship and funding of oligarch Khodorkovsky.”

He also added that Attila Biro, one of the Context.ro journalists that published the investigation into Mănescu, was “part of the operation to attempt to assassinate the Bulgarian Prosecutor General.”

“This type of kompromat generated and directed from Moscow is a disinformation operation that is part of the hybrid warfare arsenal that the Russian Federation is deploying against Western democracies. This is what we are talking about today in Romania," said Geoană.

Biro responded, noting that Context.ro is not and has never been funded by Khodorkovsky, but through grants from the European Commission.

“Mr. Geoană has repeated a conspiracy theory and gross fake news that has been condemned by the Organized Crime and Reporting Project network. The reality is that journalists at Context.ro have investigated one of the largest financial fraud operations amounting to several hundred million euros. While we were investigating this operation, a series of publications spreading fake news in Bulgaria invented this theory related to the former Bulgarian Prosecutor General," said Attila Biro.

Mircea Geoană’s campaign has been under fire in recent weeks. Last month, however, Inscop Research released a poll that indicated him as the leading candidate in the race for president. According to Inscop, Geoană (independent) is polling at 21.4% in voting intentions for the first round of the presidential elections, followed closely by prime minister and Social Democrat (PSD) leader Marcel Ciolacu at 20.3%.

A more recent poll, conducted before the controversy regarding Manescu, reversed the hierarchy, placing the prime minister in first place.

radu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Mircea Geoana on Facebook)