Bogdan Peșchir sent to trial for voter bribery over TikTok gifts in Georgescu's 2024 campaign
Prosecutors say Bogdan Peșchir paid influencers and sent gifts and crypto worth 290,225.90 USD in total to sway voters toward Călin Georgescu in the 2024 presidential election.
The charges
Romanian prosecutors from the Prosecutor's Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice sent Bogdan Peșchir, a businessman from Brașov, to trial on Friday, 9 October 2026. He faces a charge of voter bribery (coruperea alegătorilor) covering 874 material acts, prosecuted in continuous form, and he is being tried while at liberty. According to the indictment, he used the TikTok platform to manipulate voters into backing Călin Georgescu in the 2024 presidential election. Prosecutors say the benefits were given between 13 October 2024 at 19:01 and 27 November 2024 at 21:00, with the stated aim of getting voters to support a particular candidate. The details come from a statement issued by the Prosecutor General's Office.
- Start of the period in which the indictment says benefits were given
- Start of the period of six cryptocurrency transfers to two people
- End of the gift period stated in the indictment
- Peșchir sent to trial, charged with 874 material acts of voter bribery
Money and channels
Prosecutors put the total value of the alleged benefits at 290,225.90 USD. Of that sum, 868 gifts sent through TikTok, worth 251,065.11 USD, went to 105 users. Six cryptocurrency transfers worth 39,160.31 USD went to two people between 18 November 2024 at 16:59 and 25 November 2024 at 12:18. Some outlets gave the total rounded as 290,225 dollars, and Libertatea described it as about 290,000 dollars. These are the amounts alleged in the indictment, not sums a court has found.
- 868 gifts to 105 TikTok users
- 251065.11 USD
- 6 crypto transfers to two people
- 39160.31 USD
How prosecutors describe the mechanism
Prosecutors say the influence operation ran on three levels. The first was the recruitment of high-profile TikTok influencers with reach among people following electoral debates online, who were paid systematically to promote the candidate and his platform. Those payments were disguised as creative activities in long LIVE sessions, and each influencer reportedly received 390 lei for every 20,000 users. Prosecutors allege the defendant steered the topics discussed in those sessions, guiding viewers to state their electoral choice for the candidate. The second level was gifts sent during online sessions to voters openly backing Georgescu and to recruited potential voters, which created the impression among users that anyone who voted for him would receive gifts from the defendant. The third was direct bank transfers to people willing to declare support for the candidate and tasked with persuading people in their close circle. The prosecutors summarised the financing this way.
In practical terms, the defendant engaged, as a personal contribution during the sessions, massive financial resources, distributed both by him and by the content creators, in the form of gifts and cryptocurrency transfers.
Where the case stands
Peșchir is charged while at liberty, and the case was handled by the prosecutor's office together with officers of the Directorate for Investigating Economic Crime within the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police (IGPR). Ziare.com reports that the indictment was sent to the Brașov Judecătoria, the court of first instance. The coverage describes the defendant as a businessman from Brașov and Georgescu as a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. The reports do not give a date for the first hearing.
