₦airaland Forum

naptu2:
The Alex Saab saga.

The US Government has been opposed to the Venezuelan Government since the days of Hugo Chavez. Alex Saab is a Venezuelan-Lebanese businessman who is closely linked to the Venezuelan Government.

His private jet stopped over in Cape Verde to refuel and he was detained due to an Interpol red notice. The US Government had declared him wanted on money laundering charges.


Some Nigerian and foreign influencers recently tweeted a hashtag calling on the Cape Verde Government to free him. The people who tweeted that sponsored hashtag had their Twitter accounts suspended.

naptu2:
That's what they do. They get paid to tweet.

I bet most of them had never heard of the guy until they were paid to tweet that hashtag.

naptu2:
1) It is against Twitter rules to coordinate and sponsor a hashtag. Hashtags must grow organically. Anybody that manipulates a hashtag can be suspended and this is the number one reason why many Nigerian influencers are often suspended.


2) Twitter still exists within political spheres, which means that you are not meant to use it to do anything illegal. Twitter is an American company and the US has sanctions against Venezuela.

Venezuela accused of waging Twitter war to free dealmaker.

Intelligence study cites use of fake accounts to sway government of Cape Verde

www.nairaland.com/attachments/13360988_fall_jpegdf92d9fb5404dfc1d1da077e2321638c
Saab was arrested in Cape Verde last June on a US arrest warrant when his private jet landed to refuel © YouTube


March 14, 2021 7:07 pm by Gideon Long in Bogotá and Michael Stott in London

The Venezuelan government is using fake Twitter accounts to sway public opinion and stop authorities in the West African islands of Cape Verde from extraditing its chief dealmaker to the US, according to an intelligence analysis.

The report, a copy of which was passed to the Financial Times, analysed more than half a million Twitter posts related to Alex Saab, a Colombian citizen accused by Washington of running illicit fuel and gold trading schemes to help Nicolás Maduro’s government evade sanctions.

The Maduro regime, it concluded, “and/or its proxies (witting or unwitting) are involved in a co-ordinated campaign to influence both the government of Cabo Verde and its population to obstruct Alex Saab’s extradition”.

Saab was detained in Cape Verde, also known as Cabo Verde, last June on a US arrest warrant when his private jet landed to refuel. The Maduro government said he was on a humanitarian mission to secure food and medical equipment to combat coronavirus. The US and the Venezuelan opposition said he was going to Iran, probably to secure supplies of fuel in defiance of US sanctions.

Saab has been held on the islands since then while the courts consider a US extradition request. Washington hopes Saab will provide valuable information about the inner workings of the Maduro government. It accuses him of helping the regime import petrol from Iran, buy state-subsidised food in Mexico and export illegally mined Venezuelan gold to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates while channelling money through a web of companies in Panama, Hong Kong and elsewhere.

Caracas has made a concerted effort to try to ensure Saab is sent back to Venezuela. The Maduro government wants him set free because it claims he has diplomatic status as a “special envoy” from Venezuela to Iran, while the US state department says there is no basis for him to claim immunity.

The intelligence report, passed to the Venezuelan opposition, examined 547,000 tweets related to Saab’s case published in Africa and South America from October 2020 to February 2021.

“Our analysis suggests that there has been an increasing effort, organised (at least in part) by the Maduro regime . . . to direct pressure towards the government of Cabo Verde regarding the judicial decisions issued in Saab’s extradition case,” it concluded.

The study identified two groups of suspicious Twitter accounts. Those in the first group were all set up last October. Their owners tweeted extensively about Saab and then fell silent by November 3. Five of the accounts tweeted about Saab more than 800 times over the span of just a few weeks.

The second group contained 86 accounts, all set up between December and February, that published identical content about Saab’s case. None of them included a banner picture or profile biography and some of them shared the same profile photograph. Most of them had no followers and did not follow other accounts.

The report concluded that the evidence suggested “a co-ordinated effort designed to pressure the government of Cabo Verde into releasing Saab” and said agents of the Maduro regime appeared to be “both progenitors and active participants in this campaign”.

Pro-Saab Twitter traffic had increased since the new year and “the primer driver of that increase appears to be the deployment of Nigeria-based social media influencers”, the analysis said.

Saab has had close links to Venezuela for years. In 2011 he signed a joint venture contract as head of a Colombian company to build prefabricated houses in Venezuela. The US Department of Justice says he and his company never fulfilled the contract. “[They] transferred approximately $350m out of Venezuela, through the United States, to overseas accounts they owned or controlled,” it said in 2019.

The US Treasury says Saab laundered the profits from a Venezuelan government scheme to import food “through a sophisticated network of shell companies, business partners and family members”.

Saab’s defence team, which includes high-profile Spanish lawyer Baltasar Garzón, has complained that he has been held in inhumane conditions in Cape Verde and his health has deteriorated. In late January he was granted house arrest.

His legal team said in a statement: “It is not for us to enter into an assessment of any information regarding the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as our work is limited solely and exclusively to the technical and legal defence of our client in the face of the extradition request of the US.”

The Venezuelan government did not respond to a request for comment.

Ishilove:
Which 'controversial trend' caused this present fuckery?

naptu2:
The Alex Saab saga.

The US Government has been opposed to the Venezuelan Government since the days of Hugo Chavez. Alex Saab is a Venezuelan-Lebanese businessman who is closely linked to the Venezuelan Government.

His private jet stopped over in Cape Verde to refuel and he was detained due to an Interpol red notice. The US Government had declared him wanted on money laundering charges.


Some Nigerian and foreign influencers recently tweeted a hashtag calling on the Cape Verde Government to free him. The people who tweeted that sponsored hashtag had their Twitter accounts suspended.

naptu2:
That's what they do. They get paid to tweet.

I bet most of them had never heard of the guy until they were paid to tweet that hashtag.

naptu2:
1) It is against Twitter rules to coordinate and sponsor a hashtag. Hashtags must grow organically. Anybody that manipulates a hashtag can be suspended and this is the number one reason why many Nigerian influencers are often suspended.


2) Twitter still exists within political spheres, which means that you are not meant to use it to do anything illegal. Twitter is an American company and the US has sanctions against Venezuela.

Ishilove:
Which 'controversial trend' caused this present fuckery?

27Pushing30:
Ensars did not grow organically, it was pushed by these influencers and people adopted it.

27Pushing30:
Was the Endsars hastag not coordinated? yet Twitter even gave them an Emoji?

Twitter being an American company doesn't mean it is not an International platform for airing opinions.

All i see is censorship.

27Pushing30:
Is that so bad enough to warrant an account suspension?

Sheni u see selective punishment?

naptu2:
1) It is against Twitter rules to coordinate and sponsor a hashtag. Hashtags must grow organically. Anybody that manipulates a hashtag can be suspended and this is the number one reason why many Nigerian influencers are often suspended.


2) Twitter still exists within political spheres, which means that you are not meant to use it to do anything illegal. Twitter is an American company and the US has sanctions against Venezuela.

emmyN:
Oh really? Since when did Twitter become a government organization? I believe everyone has a right of association.

TheFacelessMan:
Thanks for the context provided.

I didn't understand the last sentence though. Were the Nigerian "influencers" sponsored to tweet in favour of the detained guy?

malcom1X:
I don't see anything wrong in the government negotiating with them and maybe paying them.
If the government had channeled the money to the right place (because it's all about money) we wouldn't be having these issues now.


So negotiate with them, come to terms, if it's giving them cash, give to them after all the agitations are Bourne out of neglect.

malcom1X:
Nice idea, let's just keep quiet and let it escalate.

malcom1X:
It's not true bro, have you ever heard of the domino effect?

Let me explain, people break into Lagos warehouse to take palliatives because it wasn't given as at when due, then all of a sudden all over Nigeria people starts breaking into warehouses.

Nigerians were attacked in SA then people starts attacking ShopRite in Lagos, then ibadan, then Oyo, then Osun, just like that.
Remember MTN offices?

Remember ENDSARS?
Remember Trump, when social media banned him, then all other social media started banning him

Once this prison break has happened, it's going to continue just like that, non stop, it's growing into something bigger, don't count south west out of anything that happens in Nigeria.

You need to be praying for peace. The government need to come to the table.