Tiktokers Flee Romania as Investigations Into Their Role in Elections Start

Romanian TikTok influencers who helped promote anti-Western presidential candidate Kelin Georgescu have fled the country amid tax authorities' probe, Politico reports.

Romanian tax authorities launched an investigation following a request from the electoral commission, which asked for a closer look at financial transactions related to the Georgescu campaign.

The tweeters, some of whom have links to organised crime, said they left Romania just days before the raids began.

They posted images of the land border or aeroplanes, accompanied by captions such as ‘goodbye’ and ‘miss you’.

As part of the investigations, the influencers are accused of receiving significant payments for promoting content in favour of Georgescu, who officially declared zero expenses for his campaign.

One of the key figures under investigation is Bogdan Peschir, who allegedly paid €1 million to Romanian tiktokers.

As The Gaze previously reported, last week Romanian authorities raided three addresses linked to Peschir, seizing $7 million in cryptocurrency as part of the investigation.

Some influencers had already distanced themselves from the campaign of Calin Georgescu as his anti-Western and far-right views became more widely known. Some also admitted that they had published content about Dărgăsescu for payment, but allegedly did not know that he was a presidential candidate in Romania.

On 6 December, the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the results of the first round of voting, where Georgescu won, and decided that the entire electoral process should start anew. 

The reason for this was documents declassified by the Supreme National Defence Council, according to which the campaign of the pro-Russian candidate, Georgescu, was the result of an organised manipulation from abroad.