Tal Hanan ( he, טל חנן; born in 1973), also known by his code name Jorge, is an Israeli businessman and former

special forces Special forces and special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO has defined special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and equip ...

operator who has been involved in

disinformation Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the L ...

campaigns in order to manipulate

election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...

s in several countries. Hanan's organisation Team Jorge has, for instance, attempted to influence the

2015 Nigerian general election General elections were held in Nigeria on 28 and 29 March 2015, the fifth quadrennial election to be held since the end of military rule in 1999. Voters elected the President and members to the House of Representatives and the Senate. The incu ...

in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica. The group operate a software called

AIMS AIMS or Aims may refer to: Education * Acharya Institute of Management and Sciences, Bangalore, Karnataka, India * Adventist International Mission School, Muak Lek, Thailand * African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cape Town, South Afric ...

for creating fake online accounts on social media networks and using them to spread fake news. Tal Hanan's operation was the subject of an undercover investigation conducted by journalists from ''

TheMarker ''TheMarker'' ( he, דה-מרקר) is a Hebrew-language daily business newspaper published by the Haaretz group in Israel. ''TheMarker'' was founded in 1999 by journalist and entrepreneur Guy Rolnik along with Haaretz group and U.S.-based invest ...

'', '' Radio France'', and ''

Haaretz ''Haaretz'' ( , originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , ) is an Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in the Berliner f ...

'' in Israel working together with the journalism organization

Forbidden Stories Forbidden Stories is a non-profit organization with the mission "to continue and publish the work of other journalists facing threats, prison, or murder." To achieve this, it allows journalists to send their work to Forbidden Stories, so other jou ...

. It was then jointly reported in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', ''

Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...

'', ''Haaretz'', ''

Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' and others in February 2023. Hanan has denied any wrongdoing.

References

1973 births Living people Israeli businesspeople {{Israel-bio-stub