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Another fake news is circulating about high-ranking Armenian officials: this time the target is the Speaker of the National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, who has been compared to Jeffrey Epstein. The latter, it should be noted, was an American billionaire who was accused and convicted of child molestation and considered a sex abuser.
The article titled “Armenian Jeffrey Epstein: How Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan built a pedo-empire for high-ranking officials” was published on the VT Foreign Policy/Veterans Today platform. The article alleges that the Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan and the country’s top leaders are involved in a pedophile network.
By the way, this article was also published on the website of the Foundation to Battle Injustice established by Prigozhin.
The Fact Investigation Platform studied the website having published the article, the claims contained therein and revealed that it was groundless, the accusations were unsupported, and it can be traced back to the Russian circles.
According to the WHOIS tool, the domain of the VT Foreign Policy website was registered in 2023.
The About us section of the website states that VT is a “censorship-free alternative” platform where anyone can publish whatever they want. “… a virtual media outlet that provides a free and open platform for 100% independent authors from the United States and around the world to express their views without censorship,” the website states.
The main “source” of the published article is the study by the Foundation to Battle Injustice. The Foundation to Battle Injustice (FBR/FBI – similar to the well-known English acronym of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI – ed.) is closely related to the Wagner Foundation. It should be noted that the founder of this organization is Yevgeny Prigozhin. It is associated with processes under Kremlin-aligned influence.
The Foundation, which poses as a “human rights” organization, is headed by Mira Terada, also known as Oksana Vovk. This Russian woman, according to various sources, spent more than two years in a US prison on charges of money laundering in connection with drug trafficking (she returned to Russia in 2021 – ed.). The Foundation uses influential celebrities on American and foreign social media platforms to spread propaganda and disinformation in the West.
The article states that they have allegedly been conducting an investigation for months to “uncover the largest network of high-ranking pedophiles in the history of Armenia.” However, there is no evidence of this, no interviews with the victims or their testimonies, no factual data, etc. And those who allegedly spoke to the author of the article are presented anonymously.
Let us recall that months ago this network published a fabricated story about “biolaboratories,” which Fip.am also covered and revealed that pro-Kremlin circles targeted high-ranking Armenian officials with groundless claims and unevidenced accusations.
The article features a photo stating that it shows Alen Simonyan with underage girls. However, our study shows that the man in the photo does not resemble Alen Simonyan and, moreover, it does not prove that the person it depicts is Simonyan.
Similar images are widespread on stock platforms (Alamy, Depositphotos, Dreamstime, etc.). Checks show that the probability of this particular image being generated by artificial intelligence is 2.6 percent.
At the same time, this photo was not completely found on the Internet as a stock version. This may mean that it is either a real stock photo, but modified, or simply edited using several images.
Who is the author of the fake article?
The Foundation’s website does not indicate the author of the article, but VT Foreign Policy indicated a young Brazilian named Lucas Leiroz as the author. The website provides details about Lucas: “Brazilian journalist, geopolitical analyst. Graduated from the Cultural Extension Program of the Brazilian Military College. Works as a journalist and geopolitical analyst. Research fellow in the “Crisis, Development and Foreign Affairs” research group at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. Upon the invitation of the Russian delegation in Geneva, he reported on the use of chemical weapons by the Ukrainian armed forces at the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council and the OSCE Supplementary Discussions.
Lucas’s X account is more telling and emphasizes his pro-Russian stance: the cover photo of his account features Lugansk, which Russian forces have been fighting to take over for years, and his profile photo features Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The journalist’s Linkedin account reads: “I often comment on geopolitics on Sputnik Radio.” Notably, Radio Sputnik is part of the “Rossiya Segodnya” media group being one of the Russian propaganda sources.
Thus, the article accusing the Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly and high-ranking officials of child molestation is devoid of facts, and the cases, claims, and anonymous conversations contained there are dubious and usupported. Fip.am’s investigation shows that this is another information attack by the Russian circles.
Hasmik Hambardzumyan
You can also read: False investigation into drug testing in Armenia: Prigozhin’s Wagner behind the disinformation
