Funky Little Liars
The leading Romanian fact-checker should be suspended and its management, including Elena Calistru, Ana Poenariu, should resign, or be fired.
The facts are quite simple, yet the leading fact-checker got it wrong. We told them they were wrong, they didn’t correct it, and now a major news piece based on public information confirms we were right. The fact-checker, Factual, a program run by the “NGO1” Funky Citizens, still has its false fact-check online as we write. The team in charge should resign or be fired, and the “NGO” should be ousted from the moderation architecture (EDMO, EFCSN, IFCN, and from META contracts and others).
Before we dive in, let’s be clear: this is not an accident. It is one example of the weaponization of the DSA against political opposition, part of a broader battle being waged not only against legitimate opposition but also against critical voices, non-aligned voices, independent voices. If you don’t dance and sing for the executive powers, you’re a target.
The timeline is simple:
On April 23, 2025, just a few days into the new presidential campaign, news broke and was repeated all over the Romanian media that the AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians) had a lobby contract registered in the USA under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which obliges any American lobbyist to declare it to the Department of Justice before acting on behalf of any foreign person or organization.
It was all over the place at that moment.
Outside of some click-bait reporting claiming a payment was made, most reporting focused on the contract itself and the fact that it’s a preliminary declaration.
On April 28, 2025, veteran journalist Patrick de Hillerin (co-author) explains at length on Facebook how FARA declarations work.
“Here’s what some (signed) lobbying contracts in the U.S. look like for Romanian politicians, parties, and institutions — and what the market price roughly is
Because G4 Media, candidate Crin Antonescu, and others insist that there is a lobbying contract between AUR and a U.S. firm (BGD Legal & Consulting), supposedly signed on April 18, 2025, I’m bringing some clarifications for those who like precision: the contract (the engagement letter) filed in the FARA registry is not signed by anyone from AUR. Furthermore, what G4 maliciously claims to be the date of the “contract signing” is, in fact, the date when the document was uploaded online to the FARA registry: April 18, 2025, at 03:07 AM, or in American format, 04/18/2025 #:00:07:00 AM. BGD emailed the engagement letter (rather thin and without many details) on March 31, 2025. If AUR had signed that document, March 31 would have been the signing date of the “contract.” It isn’t that either, because the document uploaded by BGD to the FARA registry contains no signature from Lulea or anyone from AUR.
Why, then, does that document exist in the registry? It’s simple: U.S. law — specifically the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) — requires anyone acting on behalf of a “foreign agent” to register before undertaking any actions on behalf of that “agent.” [… ]” — Hillerin, 28/04/2025
It’s a long post, reviewing several instances of lobby contracts declared under FARA, available here.
On May 22, 2025, the AUR party published a communiqué denying making any sort of payment based on the contract.
On May 23, 2025, the USR Party (Union Save Romania), supporting Mr. Nicușor Dan, published a press communiqué claiming AUR had paid the amount of 1.5 million, asking for an audit.
On May 28, 2025, Funky Citizens fact checked Simion’s denial. The first version of the fact-check mentioned a contract from 2022 but pointed to a FARA document from 2025. Most importantly, it claimed to verify if a payment had been made, showed no proof of payment, yet concluded they had demonstrated the payment was made.
“In a post on his blog, George Simion spoke about his trip to Poland, where he attended the PISM Strategic Ark event, aimed at strengthening relations with other sovereignist parties. In the same text, Simion mentioned that we should focus on the future, not on “lies such as the 1.5 million euros that we supposedly paid or should pay for political consulting in the USA.”
WHAT ARE WE VERIFYING?
We verify whether AUR paid the sum of 1.5 million dollars to a consulting firm in the USA....”
“CONCLUSION
George Simion’s statement is false. The U.S. Department of Justice has already registered the contract between the AUR party and the American lobbying firm, which explicitly includes the sum of 1.5 million dollars for networking activities and media promotion.” — Factual (Funky Citizens), 28/05/2025
On August 8, 2025, in the context of a broader investigation into the abuses of censorship, co-author Stéphane Luçon drew the attention of the head of Funky Citizens to the fact that their fact-check was misleading, regarding the dates provided (he asked the Wayback Machine to save the page at that time) and the totally flawed demonstration: a contract is not proof of payment.
On August 27, 2025, after writing to them again, Luçon received the following answer from the fact-checking team, specifically from Ms. Ana Poenariu, with Ms. Calistru in cc:
“Regarding https://www.factual.ro/declaratii/fals-george-simion-neaga-plata-a-15-milioane-de-dolari-catre-o-firma-americane-de-lobby/ — There was a typing error regarding the year mentioned in the text. We corrected it and marked it as corrected. The contract exists and was published by the DOJ. You can find the proof in the text and also in this link: https://efile.fara.gov/docs/7576-Exhibit-AB-20250502-2.pdf . On the other hand, the politician denies its existence.” —email, Ana Poenariu (Factual), 27/8/2025
A partial correction, visible on the fact check, today November 22, 2025 The same day, Luçon tried again to get a reasonable reaction.
“Dear Ana, thank you for your reply,
Do you realize, as mentioned in my previous message, that the “fact check” claims to verify if the payment has been made and does not provide any proof of payment?”— email, Stéphane Luçon, 27/8/2025There wasn’t any other reply from Funky Citizens on that specific matter.
On September 24, we published a comprehensive report about the DSA and how it has been weaponized against independent voices, mentioning the blatant lie published by Funky Citizens.
Then on September 29, 2025, we contacted each participant, assuming some would try to clarify parts of the points raised in the reporting. We made the move public here:
No further correction was provided whatsoever on the key issues raised by our investigation.On 21 November, 2025, in the context of a broader investigation into AUR’s party financing—covering both the Bucharest Mayor campaign and the electoral authority’s refusal to reimburse part of AUR’s campaign expenses—the media outlet Snoop revealed that no proof had been found for a payment to the US. It’s worth noting that Snoop had already established its credibility and gained international visibility a year prior, when its reporting revealed that the ruling PNL party financed a campaign that ultimately led to the election’s annulment, thereby allowing the PNL to remain in power.
“AEP did not find any invoices to the USA
Another topic during the election campaign was related to AUR’s ties with a U.S. lobbying firm and the payment of a 1.5-million-dollar contract using public subsidies.
The document from the company BGD Legal & Consulting appeared on the website of the U.S. Department of Justice, and the purpose of the contract was to promote George Simion across the Ocean.
According to information obtained by Snoop.ro, the Permanent Electoral Authority did not find any payment made by AUR to the USA.” — Snoop, 21/11/2025
Fact-checking failure
From April 28 and Patrick de Hillerin’s analysis, the facts were clarified.
From August 8, Funky Citizens was directly informed of the falsity of their fact-check.
On August 27, Funky Citizens and their fact-checking team at Factual decided to make a minor correction and keep a lie online.
We believe that everybody involved in this deliberate lie should go—the management, especially our interlocutors, Elena Calistru and Ana Poenariu. But it’s not just about two bad apples hijacking the moderation architecture.
Funky Citizens should be ousted from the moderation architecture, out of EDMO (European Digital Media Observatory), because from there they gained priority flagging powers during election times to target content under the Rapid Response System. These are biased, dishonest teams gaining a power similar to the power of a trusted flagger, but secretly, and without any transparency on the actual flagging done.
They should be ousted from EFCSN (European Fact-Checking Standards Network) and IFCN (International Fact-Checking Network).
So far, we assumed we could trust them when they denied being involved in journalist censorship after we asked if they were the ones triggering the journalist content takedown cases in Romania—cases co-author Stéphane Luçon complained about to the Romanian Digital Services Coordinator (ANCOM), the Romanian Parliament’s Committee on Abuses, Corruption and Petitions, and the Romanian National Audiovisual Council.
But they are liars. They keep a lie up on their fact-checking website even when knowing it’s a lie.
They could well be the ones who systematically targeted independent voices in Romania in 2025.
They should go, be suspended from doing any further damage, and the rest of the story should be solved in court.
One last remark: Meta is still using them as an active fact-checker in Romania, with a direct impact on users’ visibility and a tendency to target narratives, shared with the other fact-checker, the French government/Big Tech/EU-financed AFP fact-check.
Twice, by email, Elena Calistru acknowledged targeting narratives:
“We don’t target specific accounts, but narratives during elections (and certainly don’t target any journalist).” — email, Elena Calistru, 17/9/2024
“We don’t target individual pages or organizations, but monitor narratives.” — email, Elena Calistru, 23/9/2024
The Meta contract must stop immediately, as they are still actively using it to distort the reach of people who don’t share their worldview. Meta must disable all the demotions triggered by abusive fact-checks.
This has to end now.
Funky Citizens must be removed from the censorship architecture, and we need a full audit of their wrongdoing.
We need it now, before they can do further damage.
Then, in time, the courts will ultimately decide on the proper redress and justice for the censored.
Later edit – November 26, 2025
Following the viralization of this article, and after one more direct email to the management of Funky Citizens and Factual, the fact-check finally received an update.
It is now labelled “impossible to verify” and links to Snoop’s article – but not to this one.
The “fact-check” misleads readers again by stating that the update was made on 22.11 (the very day we published this piece, a Saturday), whereas the update was most likely made on the 24th, as the WordPress cache indicates. What we know for sure is that on the 23rd the fact-check was still not corrected on their website, because we checked. But what else to expect from people who knowingly keep a lie online?
“Erratum November 22, 2025:
According to the journalists at Snoop.ro, the Permanent Electoral Authority did not find any payment made in the USA by the AUR party. However, the document attesting to the contractual relationship between AUR and BGD Legal & Consulting appeared on the official website of the U.S. Department of State, where you can still find it HERE.
For this reason, we changed the verdict to impossible to verify” — Factual (Funky Citizens), 24/11/2025
“CONCLUSION
George Simion’s statement is impossible to verify
false. The U.S. Department of Justice has already registered the contract between the AUR party and the American lobbying firm, in which the sum of 1.5 million dollars for networking and media promotion activities is stipulated.”— Factual (Funky Citizens), 24/11/2025
Our recommendation is to properly correct the fact-check:
• It is not “impossible to verify”: the Electoral Authority is a credible source, and so is Snoop, and so are we.
• It is crucial to include, as context, the decision by Funky Citizens and Factual’s management to deliberately lie for months.
• It is crucial to link this to the power held by Factual to target narratives and manipulate the algorithmic reach of the accounts and content they decide to fact-check.
• It is crucial to connect all this to the flagging power granted to Funky Citizens, and similar “NGOs”, during elections as part of the Rapid Response System.
Why using “NGO” with quotation marks, and not directly NGO?
Civil society means representing citizens. Some countries have a vivid ecosystem of associations, trade unions, cooperatives, with members supporting them and feeling their cause, rights, and values are represented. What happens in Romania—not only with Funky Citizens—is that organizations with zero civil legitimacy receive millions from executive powers and big corporations, directly or via various foundations and programs, then claim they represent civil society and are embraced by the executive powers as partners of dialogue. It’s obviously a disgrace and a trick, which delivers narrative enforcement and censorship on behalf of some executive power’s interests.
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