British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has been the victim of a video hoax by someone pretending to be former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, his ministry said.
“A number of messages were exchanged, followed by a brief video call between the Foreign Secretary and someone claiming to be Petro Poroshenko,” Ukraine’s president between 2014 and 2019, the ministry said in a statement late Friday.
“Although the video call clearly appeared to be with Petro Poroshenko, the Foreign Secretary became suspicious after the conversation. He was asked for contact details of other people, and given his concerns, the Foreign Secretary stopped responding,” the ministry added.
He “regrets his mistake”
After an investigation by his office, it was confirmed that the exchange, the date of which was not disclosed, was “not genuine, and that the messages and video call were a hoax,” the source added.
The Foreign Office said it had revealed the affair to avoid any attempt to manipulate the images if they were to be made public. The head of diplomacy, for his part, “regretted his mistake”.
David Cameron, British Prime Minister between 2010 and 2016, had already been the victim of a telephone hoax in 2015. A man had called him pretending to be the director of the British cyber-intelligence agency GCHQ, leading the government to review its security procedures.
