Allied Intelligence — 2026-06-17

French Anti-Interference Agency Viginum Concludes Israeli Firm BlackCore Orchestrated Digital Campaign Against Scottish First Minister Before Holyrood Election

BLUFFormal charges against BlackCore within six months remain unlikely because Viginum's own admission that it cannot identify a campaign sponsor leaves prosecutors without the principal-agent link an indictment requires.

Viginum identified at least 256 fake accounts that spread 1,400 comments across Swinney's personal account, the SNP, and the Scottish Government's official feed in the weeks before the Holyrood vote 1. Agency head Marc-Antoine Brillant said investigators could not identify the campaign's sponsor; France has formally requested an explanation from Israel, whose Paris embassy said it had not yet received particulars of the investigation 1. Viginum attributed the same modus operandi to operations in Angola, Togo, and New York City's 2025 municipal election, and BlackCore faces two concurrent French investigations by Paris prosecutors and the domestic intelligence service into who commissioned the campaigns 23.

Analysis
Formal charges against BlackCore within six months are unlikely. Viginum's admission that it cannot identify the sponsor leaves Paris prosecutors without the principal-agent chain an indictment requires, and infrastructure across four European jurisdictions complicates coordination. Moderate confidence rests on Viginum's formal attribution and two concurrent French investigations, offset by the admitted sponsor gap. Haaretz carries the sole primary report; other outlets amplify without independent originating research. The hosting links to Galacticos and SNI are the sole actionable financial thread. BlackCore may instead have acted for private clients unconnected to the Israeli state, making France's diplomatic request to Jerusalem a category error that confines prosecution to the commercial operator alone. UK and Scottish ministers weighing interference investigations carry a cleaner mandate only if French charges proceed. Absent them, London faces no institutional obligation to act on a foreign attribution it did not produce.

4 sources