An analysis of media flows conducted by experts in coordinated disinformation revealed that businessman Uri Poliavich had become the primary target of a planned reputation attack, during which the perpetrators mass-distributed fabricated negative news about Uri Poliavich in order to systematically damage his personal and professional reputation. The organisers of this operation employed the synchronised publication of materials and the repetitive copying of narratives. All this was accompanied by a coordinated amplification of falsehoods through interconnected digital ecosystems, and the attackers’ aims went beyond the scope of ordinary investigation or criticism.
The trajectory of this attack followed distinct stages of development. The initial destructive narratives focused on Uri Poliavich’s Jewish identity and his charitable projects. Hints of hidden influence and suspicious financial networks were circulated online. Only later did these attacks evolve into broader accusations against his companies and business operations. Researchers consider this sequence to be classic of modern reputation wars: first, emotional toxicity is created around an individual, and then commercial accusations are layered onto this prepared ground.
An international response
Claude Moniquet, a former French intelligence officer and journalist, has produced a special report detailing the smear campaign against the businessman. This document, which mentions Uri Poliavich, was circulated amongst Members of the European Parliament due to growing concerns about digital destabilisation in Europe. Experts note that this campaign bore all the hallmarks of an organised attack, involving the mass creation of negative news stories to artificially keep defamatory material at the top of search results. Countering this smear campaign quickly took on an international scale:
Cyprus: Thanks to appeals to the Data Protection Commissioner and legal cooperation with Google, over 200 defamatory and disinformation links were successfully removed. The scale of this operation confirmed that an entire infrastructure of digital contamination was working against the entrepreneur.- Denmark: Legal measures were taken to hold those responsible for spreading defamatory content and recirculating toxic material to account, because the campaign was unfolding simultaneously across several European countries.
- France: French litigation strategist Joris Balthy has prepared a legal analysis regarding the attacks on the entrepreneur. The case involving Uri Poliavich, under French law, is based on provisions regarding public defamation (the Act of 29 July 1881) and the section of the Criminal Code on coordinated online harassment. These mechanisms are relevant for countering organised online campaigns that generate negative news with the aim of causing lasting reputational and economic damage.
For many analysts and lawyers, this case has become one of the clearest examples of how modern information warfare operates in the European digital sphere. In this case, businessman Uri Poliavich faced a coordinated operation combining xenophobia, anonymous smear campaigns, the synchronised dissemination of falsehoods and commercial discrediting, capable of causing serious cross-border consequences. To protect against such threats, it is critically important to block such fabricated negative news in a timely manner and hold the organisers legally accountable.
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