Poland finds what it says may be foreign-funded election interference

By Karol Badohal

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland said on Wednesday it had uncovered what could be an attempt to interfere in its presidential election campaign using advertisements on Facebook that may have been financed from abroad, an assertion the social media platform disputed.

European governments have been on high alert for signs of electoral interference since Romania cancelled an ongoing presidential election in December due to allegations of Russian interference, which Moscow denied.

The first round of the Polish election takes place on Sunday, pitting liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, a senior member of the ruling Civic Platform party, against historian Karol Nawrocki, who runs Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, and far-right nationalist Slawomir Mentzen.

"The NASK Disinformation Analysis Center has identified political ads on the Facebook platform that may be financed from abroad. The materials were displayed in Poland," said NASK, the national research institute dealing with cybersecurity.

"The advertising accounts involved in the campaign spent more on political materials in the last 7 days than any election committee," a NASK statement said. It did not say which country the financing might have come from.

A spokesperson for Facebook's parent company Meta rejected the assertions of potential foreign meddling.

"Anybody who wants to run ads on our platforms related to social issues, elections or politics must go through a verification process to prove their identity and that they live in the country they are running the ads in," the spokesperson said.

"Our investigation has confirmed that the admin associated with these pages is authentic and based in Poland. We have seen no evidence of foreign interference."

POSSIBLE 'PROVOCATION'

NASK said the advertisements were ostensibly supporting one of the candidates in the election, but could in fact have aimed to act to the detriment of that candidate and destabilise the situation in the country.

Andrzej Kozlowski, head of NASK's Narrative Trend Analysis and Fact-checking Team, told state-run news channel TVP Info that the ads sought to discredit Nawrocki and Mentzen and ostensibly back Trzaskowski, but could have been a provocation.

NASK also said in its statement it had reported the accounts concerned to Meta for blocking. It had also told Poland's Internal Security Agency and work was under way to determine the origin and financing of the advertisements.

Poland has previously said that its role as a hub for aid to Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in 2022, makes it a prime target for Russian espionage, sabotage and cyberattacks.

Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski recently said Poland was facing an "unprecedented attempt to interfere in the electoral process from the Russian side".

Gawkowski said on Wednesday that "hundreds of thousands of zlotys" had been spent on the advertisements but that he did not know if Russia was responsible for the campaign.

Russia has denied previous allegations of meddling in foreign elections.

(Reporting by Karol Badohal, Pawel Florkiewicz, writing by Alan Charlish; editing by Timothy Heritage and Mark Heinrich)