Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-03-27/Disinformation report

When Russian president Vladimir Putin gave the order for Russian troops to invade Ukraine, he set off a search for information on his friends and supporters known as the Russian oligarchs. Some of the sought-after information is on the location of their yachts, luxury jet planes, and financial assets, in order for Western governments to seize these assets and pressure Putin to stop the war.

There are several dozen Russians commonly called oligarchs. They include some of the richest people in the world who acquired their riches with the support of Putin's regime and in turn have supported Putin and his policies. They tend to be secretive, carefully protecting their privacy. The New Yorker in its article "How Putin's Oligarchs Bought London" cites Oliver Bullough's view that the oligarchs came to London for, among other reasons, luxury homes, experienced lawyers and tax accountants, PR firms, and "'reputation managers' for inconvenient backstories".^[1]

There are many articles on Wikipedia about the oligarchs. We selected the articles on some of the richest and best known to see if they – or more likely their employees – have edited Wikipedia to remove embarrassing information, and whether known sockpuppets have edited the articles about them.

The Signpost's investigation has found that well known oligarch Alisher Usmanov hired the PR firm RLM Finsbury, whose employees then edited the Wikipedia article about Usmanov.^[2][3] Also, employees of the infamous PR firm Bell Pottinger, who were later blocked as sockpuppets, edited the articles of lesser known oligarchs Alexander Nesis^[4] and Arkadiy Abramovich.^[5]

Bell Pottinger was exposed to the world as an unethical Wikipedia whitewasher in 2011 following an undercover investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Bell Pottinger had told the reporters, who posed as Uzbeki officials known for human rights violations, that they could remove material from Wikipedia using "dark arts".^[6] Bell Pottinger continued to represent controversial clients. In 2017 they were forced to close after it was discovered that they were working for the Gupta family using a social media campaign that promoted racial hatred in South Africa.

RLM Finsbury was exposed as a whitewasher in 2012 when they were caught editing Wikipedia for Usmanov. They admitted their mistake and promised never to repeat it. Finsbury also represented another Russian oligarch, Andrei Skoch, and attempted to have information about his yacht removed from the social media site SuperYacht Fan.

But not all the articles on oligarchs that we examined showed such direct evidence of them rewriting the articles about themselves. The article on Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea F.C. and the father of Arkadiy, more or less appeared to neutrally present the facts of his life, even though it had been edited by about 50 now-blocked sockpuppets (deceptive users of multiple accounts). The articles on four other oligarchs were of varying quality with varying levels of evidence of sockpuppeting, but together they show a pattern of sockpuppet edits, often performed by the same sockpuppets or sockfarms (groups of sockpuppets who appear to be cooperating, and who are often blocked as a group) on the articles of multiple oligarchs.

Sockpuppets do not usually whitewash the same article with each edit. Some may simply update the oligarch's net worth frequently or copy edit the article. Others may add positive information or push negative information toward the bottom of the article. Some may even appear to be working against the oligarch's interest.

We remind our readers that any investigation of onWiki editing cannot prove who edited the articles based purely on editing records and other information made available on Wikipedia. For example an editor may mimic a sockpuppet or undeclared paid editor in an effort to embarrass the subject of an article, a practice known as "joe jobbing". We can, however, gather the evidence that is available either on-Wiki or off-Wiki.