The USR party spent over 20,000 euros in just 2 weeks to slander PNL minister Lucian Bode online for his decision to sign a contract for the purchase of 600 BMWs for MAI, Romania TV writes.
According to the cited source, the party led by Cătalin Drula used Google and Facebook to attack the minister on all major news sites in Romania. For this „media guerilla” campaign, USR worked with the media agency with which PSD had a contract during Liviu Dragnea’s PM period. Zenvertising was founded and is controlled by Mihai Șuica (aged 34) from Teleorman.
All big and important news sites in Romania were targeted by USR’s endeavor. Digi24.ro, Observatornews.ro, RomâniaTV.net, Antena3.ro and the tabloid Libertatea.ro were just some of the biggest sites in Romania on which the banners involving Minister Lucian Bode and a model of a BMW police car appeared.
The banners were adapted in orde to resemble fake news ads as much as possible and integrated into the design of the news sites in order to trick the readers of these publications into clicking on them. Most of the banners included the word „NEWS” at the top, so as to attract as many clicks as possible on those areas. Some of those banners were so aggressive that Google Ads officially rejected them.
Romania TV also notes that a few days ago, Cătălin Drulă was confronted head-on by Putrea newspaper on the Zenvertising case and lied publicly, denying a contract between USR and the Zenvertising agency. This is refuted even by the answer sent by USR to RomâniaTv.net in a request that included several questions on this topic.
