The reputation of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (ANTAC), a Ukrainian anticorruption NGO, was called into question in May 2017, when a video featuring a report from the American “News24” network appeared on YouTube; the video reported on investigations into the finances of Vitaliy Shabunin, the head of the ANTAC board. A few months later, in September 2017, Ukraine’s NewsOne featured a live broadcast of a sitting of the US Congressional Committee on Financial Issues in relation to alleged corruption in the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). The hearing focused largely on the conduct of Valeriya Hontareva, who had championed reforms of the banking sector to prevent misuse of the system by business tycoons. The panelists suggested that Ms. Hontareva was herself corrupt and being investigated by the US Congress.

Reports that leading figures fighting for more integrity in Ukraine might themselves be corrupt are, of course, disturbing. What’s even more disturbing is the fact that both of these stories were completely fabricated. News24 does not exist. The news anchor who appeared in the purported News24 video was an American actor named Michael-John Wolfe, hired through the site Fiverr.com. As for the broadcast of the hearing before the “US Congressional Committee on Financial Issues”—there is no such committee. The so-called “hearing” was in fact a private event organized by lobbyists (including former congressman Connie Mack), held in a room in the basement of the US Capitol without the attendance of any current members of Congress. (Representative Ron Estes (R-KS) sponsored the room’s booking, apparently in violation House ethics guidelines.)

Although attempts to tarnish the reputations of activists and reformers are not new, the two incidents described above reveal that anti-anti-corruption forces are beginning to deploy the “fake news” tactics that garnered so much attention in recent elections, especially though not exclusively in the United States. And while in these incidents fake news was used as an offensive strategy, fake news has also been deployed defensively, for example by the wealthy and influential Gupta family in South Africa, to shake off allegations of corruption.

Although these efforts in Ukraine seem clumsy and easily exposed, it is likely that fake news will be an increasingly difficult challenge for anticorruption efforts in the years to come. The fake news phenomenon threatens to undermine anticorruption efforts in a variety of ways: Continue reading →