The Argentine Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE, for its Spanish initials) has “detected” a group of Russian citizens living in Argentina who were creating fake-news campaigns against the Argentine state, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on Wednesday. 

According to Adorni, the SIDE’s investigation revealed the existence of an “entity close to the Russian government” called “The Company.” Their goal was to “create a group of people loyal to Russia’s interests and design disinformation campaigns.”

A Russian man, who was identified as the leader of “The Company,” was in charge of receiving funding and promoting relations with the local collaborators alongside his wife, Adorni said. The couple is living in Argentina, he added.

The Russian embassy in Argentina published a statement saying that the man and woman mentioned by the spokesman are not “registered at the embassy’s consular section.” The diplomatic body added that they had sent a note to the Russian foreign ministry “requesting clarification” on the couple’s legal status.

“Sadly, this is not the first wave of espionage-mania our country’s adversaries have attempted to try and damage Russian-Argentine relations,” the embassy’s communiqué said.

The accusation and Project Lakhta

According to Adorni, the group’s activities included “creating and spreading content in social media, influencing civil organizations, foundations, and local NGOs, the development of focus groups with national citizens, and obtaining political information to use it in favor of Russia’s interests.”

The spokesman added that the group was “working closely” alongside Argentine citizens and that it “shares ties” with an initiative called the Lakhta Project. 

Project Lakhta was a Russian fake-news and internet trolling operation carried out by the Internet Research Agency (IRA). It made headlines in 2018 after it was discovered that they were producing and spreading disinformation about the United States midterm elections. 

The IRA was funded and managed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a gastronomy businessman close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and leader of a private military company known as the Wagner Group. The group, which has been described as a proxy of the Russian Armed Forces, has been heavily involved in the war in Ukraine. In 2023, Prigozhin fell out of favor with the Kremlin over Moscow’s handling of the war. He died in a plane crash around two months after his open stand-off with the Russian government.