The TikTokers accused of triggering an election scandal

Romanians are returning to the polls this weekend, following the unprecedented cancellation of presidential elections last December which fuelled protests and nationwide turmoil.

Far-right candidate Calin Georgescu's shock victory in the first round of elections was annulled amid accusations of Russian interference, suspicious TikTok accounts and secret payments to online influencers. Moscow denied interfering in the election.

Georgescu is now banned from running, and was detained, facing a criminal investigation including attempting to overthrow constitutional order. He has denied the charges and accused the authorities of "inventing evidence to justify stealing the election".

The leader of Romania's far-right AUR party, George Simion, has been polling as the frontrunner in the first round of the election re-run on Sunday.

He is followed in the polls by Crin Antonescu of the National Liberal Party and independent candidate Nicușor Dan.

At the centre of this unprecedented political crisis are TikTok influencers accused by the Romanian authorities of participating in social media campaigns which artificially boosted Georgescu's online presence. The BBC has spoken to some of them.

Pro-Russian independent candidate Calin Georgescu's victory in the first round of elections came as a surprise.

Georgescu was relatively unknown in the months before the election, polling at between 3-5%.

He declared a zero campaign budget, had no campaign office and didn't engage in traditional campaigning.

Instead, he focused on TikTok videos including some showing him riding horses in traditional Romanian outfits, and practising judo. He went viral on TikTok weeks before the election and soared in the polls, ultimately winning almost 23% of the vote.

An independent think tank, Expert Forum, published a report saying Georgescu's explosive rise on TikTok was "created suddenly and artificially - consistent with the way he exploded in the polls".

Authorities say TikTok's algorithm was exploited in the November vote in three different ways: over 100 influencers for hire who posted paid content indirectly promoting Georgescu, thousands of inauthentic accounts whose comments boosted Georgescu on the platform, and finally a "King of TikTok" who supposedly paid thousands of dollars to facilitate the campaign.

The authorities said that one of these campaigns was "identical" to an operation "run by the Russian Federation in Ukraine".

Separately, declassified intelligence documents also stated that Russia carried out "cyberattacks, leaks, and sabotage" in Romania.

But authorities still haven't provided any concrete evidence of Russian interference in the election, frustrating many Romanians.

The Foreign Intelligence Services and Romanian Police declined to comment on ongoing investigations.

Shortly before the election, a campaign using the hashtag "stability and integrity" flooded Romanian TikTok. Influencers uploaded videos describing what they were looking for in a future president: "stability", "progress", "a patriot".

They did not name a specific candidate.

They had been paid to upload videos with these messages through a marketing platform called FameUp, which allows brands to hire influencers at scale to promote products. But the influencers say they didn't know who paid for it.

FameUp declined to comment to the BBC.

Cristina, an influencer from the city of Iasi, says that when she took the job she felt "there was nothing shady about it". She says "in the back of [her] mind" she thought one of the 14 candidates likely paid for it and she "just thought it was a smart approach. That's not doing any political propaganda. It's just encouraging people to go out and vote".

Some influencers did not mark the posts as paid content. This goes against TikTok rules, where paid political advertising is banned.

While the adverts didn't mention Georgescu's name, influencers we spoke to described a "wave of comments" supporting him that appeared under the videos. Romeo Rusu, a micro-influencer from the city of Constanta with 25,000 followers, said: "Right after I posted the video, within a few seconds, I started receiving dozens of comments. In the end, I received around 300 comments, all backing the independent candidate Calin Georgescu… I was absolutely surprised."

The comments came into focus after TikTok stated in a report it had removed a network of over 27,000 inauthentic accounts that "used fictitious personas to post comments related to the Romanian elections".

It is still not clear who created these bot accounts.

Experts say that flooding unrelated videos with pro-Georgescu comments was a tactic to game TikTok's algorithm and get his name trending, which would in turn push his content into more users' feeds.

A TikTok spokesperson told the BBC that, during the presidential campaign, the company "blocked millions of fake engagement attempts, removed hundreds of thousands of spam accounts, prevented impersonation of political candidates, and disrupted three covert influence networks with limited reach".

"We continue to work closely with local and EU authorities and partner with local organisations to elevate reliable election information," they said.

The uncertainty around the campaign lasted into the new year, until a surprising twist in January.

The Romanian Tax Authority revealed that the #stabilityandintegrity campaign was paid for by the centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL), who were backing their own candidate in the elections.

In response, the PNL told Romanian journalists at news outlet Snoop that their campaign was hijacked to support Georgescu.

Then, in March, TikTok influencer Bogdan Peschir was arrested for "corrupting voters through electronic means of communication". Peschir was known across Romania as the "King of TikTok", famous for awarding influencers with TikTok gifts, online tokens worth real money.

The prosecution is reported to have claimed that Peschir paid over $900,000 to over 250 influencers "to induce them to vote for "a certain candidate" in the presidential elections" via TikTok gifts.

His lawyers are reported to have said "none of the donations made by Peschir on TikTok were for electoral purposes".

We spoke to Lucian Elgi, a musician and influencer who admitted being paid thousands of dollars by Peschir via TikTok gifts.

He says he believes these payments were made in support of his work as a musician. Elgi denied that he promoted Georgescu. The BBC could not confirm this, as his videos on TikTok – along with those by others who were paid by Peschir's TikTok handle – have been removed.

Elgi says his content wasn't about the election, but about manele music, a genre of pop-folk music with roots in the Roma community. Several high-profile manele musicians have been accused of taking payments from Peschir to campaign for Georgescu.

Elgi said this content was flooded in pro-Georgescu comments. "It was madness," he says. "Every single post, comments like: Georgescu for President, Georgescu for President, Georgescu for President!"

Much is unknown about the election's annulment. Investigations are ongoing at the European Commission and Romania's highest courts. While Romanians are concerned about the alleged foreign interference, many are outraged that there is still no publicly available evidence undeniably proving Russian interference in the election.

It's painstaking and complex work untangling an influence operation and its effects. Razvan Lutac, the Editor of Romanian news outlet Snoop, fears it could take a very long time to get clarity.

"We have these small pieces now, like a puzzle," he says, "I think that maybe in a year or two years we will have a complete image of why they cancelled the elections."