BUCHAREST, May 21. /TASS/. The leader of the nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians, George Simion, who lost in the runoff to independent pro-European candidate and Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, demanded to hear out the testimony by Telegram founder Pavel Durov about France’s reported election meddling.
In a video address, published on Facebook (a social media site banned in Russia since it is owned by Meta corporation deemed extremist by the Russian authorities) he said: "International observers saw interference not only by the Republic of Moldova, but also on the part of the French government."
"The Telegram co-founder’s testimony clearly reveals that the French government intervened to block our votes in this period, and I demand that the Telegram creator be heard before these elections are declared valid," Simion said.
"It was proven that state actors, such as the Republic of Moldova and France, and non-state actors tampered with algorithms of social networks. Therefore, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court needs to take this evidence into account," Simion said.
According to the final election results, published by Romania’s election authority on Tuesday, Dan got 6,168,642 votes in the runoff, while Simion got 5,339,053.
On May 18, Durov said that Telegram had refused to block the channels of Romanian conservatives ahead of the election at the request of "one of the Western European countries." Later, he clarified on X that Lerner had approached him with such a request this spring. The French intelligence agency confirmed that "indeed, they were forced to contact Pavel Durov directly several times in recent years to remind him of his company's responsibility to prevent threats of terrorism and child pornography," but it "strongly denies the allegations that in these cases there were requests to ban accounts in connection with an electoral process."
Later, Durov expressed his readiness to testify under oath that the statement he made about foreign meddling in the presidential election in Romania is true.