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The far right leader in the highly contested Brazilian elections has been accused of profiting from a falsely undemocratic and criminal industry and lies in his bid to become the next president of the country.
According to polls, pro-torture populist and dictatorshipist Jair Bolsonaro is preparing for a landslide victory over his rival Workers' Party (PT) party, Fernando Haddad, on Oct. 28, with about 59 percent of the expected vote over to his rival. %.
But according to allegations contained in a front page article of the Folha de São Paulo, one of the leading Brazilian newspapers, Bolsonaro allegedly received illegal aid from a group of Brazilian entrepreneurs who funded a campaign to bomb WhatsApp users with false information about Haddad
The newspaper claimed that the multi-million dollar "anti-worker party campaign" was intended to flood Brazilian voters with falsehoods and inventions by simultaneously sending back hundreds of millions of WhatsApp messages.
In some cases, overseas numbers were used to bypass the platform's anti-spam controls.
"This practice is illegal because it is an undeclared campaign donation by companies, something that is prohibited by the electoral legislation," the paper said.
"My opponent seeks to profit from electoral crimes", Haddad tweeted.
"We are facing here an attempt at electoral fraud," he added. claiming have information suggesting that 156 entrepreneurs were involved in the campaign.
At a press conference in São Paulo, Haddad told reporters that he would not rest until there was an exhaustive account of "all those who put dirty money in this smear campaign ".
"Businessmen who have committed to it will have to pay judicially – and we already know many who have participated," he said. add that he believed that there was already enough evidence to order arrests.
In a statement, the PT said it had asked the Brazilian Federal Police to investigate Bolsonaro's "lie industry".
"The criminal methods of Jair Bolsonaro are intolerable in a democracy," said the party's National Executive Committee.
The PT said messaging applications and social networks should fight misinformation or become accomplices of "handling millions of users": "The issue here is the survival of the democratic process."
The Bolsonaro campaign fought back with his son Carlos, rejecting the allegations as "half-truths" and "decontextualized lies" reflecting the "desperation" of the PT facing the impending victory of his father.
Jair Bolsonaro tweeted"False news does not hurt the PT, but the TRUTH."
Bolsonaro told the right O Antagonista website: "I can not control it if an entrepreneur who is friendly to me does it. I know it's against the law. But I can not control it, I have no way of knowing it and taking action [to stop it]. "
Observers of what some call the most important election in the history of Brazil have expressed growing concern about the impact of the false news – a good share in favor of Bolsonaro – on the race.
Much is broadcast via WhatsApp – a hard-to-monitor email application owned by Facebook that, with around 120 million active users, is extremely popular in Brazil.
In an article published this week in the New York Times, the authors of a report on the role of misinformation in the elections in Brazil urged WhatsApp to take urgent measures to "reduce the poisoning of Brazilian political life" by false or distorted information.
A spokesperson for Whatapp said: "WhatsApp has proactively banned hundreds of thousands of accounts during the Brazilian election period. We have the best spam detection technology that tracks accounts that engage in abnormal or automated behavior so that they can not be used to spread spam or misinformation. "
One of the most wacky lies is peddled by the false claim that, as mayor of São Paulo, Haddad has equipped schools with so-callederotic mamadeiras"(Erotic baby bottles) with penis shaped nipples for the supposed purpose of fighting against homophobia.
"That's what the PT and Haddad preach to your kids," says an unidentified man in a video while he shows the fictional phallus. "You must vote Bolsonaro," adds the man.
Another recent production uses a video of Haddad visiting Interlagos, Brazil's response to the Silverstone racing circuit, to suggest that he is the owner of a yellow Ferrari.
In a television interview on Wednesday, Haddad launched an online smear attack, accusing Bolsonaro of running a vile "misinformation" campaign.
"I do not even have a car," Haddad said. "I'm traveling on the subway, bus, bike and Uber."
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