Facebook has suspended the three Russian accounts belonging to a Russian businessman.
The Russian businessman who was behind the activities of the Facebook accounts was accused of interfering in the local polities of 8 African countries.
Mr Prigozhin has been accused in the past of interfering in U.S. elections.
In a bid to sanitize operations of its users, Facebook investigated the suspicious accounts and discovered that Mr Yevgeniy Prigozhin financed them in an attempt to influence elections in 8 African countries.
“Each of these operations created networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing,” Facebook cybersecurity chief, Nathaniel Gleicher said in a statement.
“We have shared information about our findings with law enforcement, policymakers and industry partners.”
The campaigns used almost 200 fake and compromised accounts to target people in Madagascar, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Sudan and Libya, Facebook said.
Between them, the accounts amassed more than 1 million followers.
Facebook described three separate operations targeting both its core social network and Instagram.
One operation included 35 accounts and 53 pages that focused on Central African Republic, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.
The effort attracted some 475,000 followers and spent $77,000 for ads posting on global and local political news including Russian policies in Africa and criticism of French and U.S. policies.
A separate operation targeting Sudan included 20 different accounts and 18 pages, some posing as news organizations.
The third network focused on Libya, involved 15 accounts and 12 pages posting about local news and geopolitical issues.
All the networks were connected to “entities associated with Russian financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin,” a Russian catering tycoon indicted by U.S. special prosecutor Robert Mueller as the backer of an alleged Russian effort to sway elections in the United States with covert social media campaigns.
Prigozhin and lawyers representing him did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the latest Facebook accusations.
Mr Yevgeniy Prigozhin has however previously denied any wrongdoing.
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Source: Agencies
Header Image Credit: CNN