London PR firm Rewrites Wikipedia for Governments and Billionaires

A major investigation has revealed that Portland Communications, a London-based PR firm founded by the current communications director for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has allegedly been involved for years in secretly editing Wikipedia pages on behalf of wealthy and powerful clients. Former employees say the firm used paid “wikilaundering” to remove or downplay negative information and promote more positive narratives, in breach of Wikipedia’s supposed rules and ethics codes.

After being caught editing pages directly in the early 2010s, Portland is said to have outsourced this work to outside specialists to avoid detection. Central to this operation was Radek Kotlarek, a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant whose company allegedly ran dozens of fake accounts to make coordinated edits appear legitimate. Journalists traced a network of 26 such accounts to his firm, which was eventually banned by Wikipedia. These accounts quietly altered articles by removing references to scandals, legal cases, or critical studies, and replacing them with more favourable material.

Some of the most significant alleged activity involved clients such as the Qatari government, the Bill Gates-funded ‘Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’ (AGRA) project, and political actors in Libya. Edits reportedly buried reports about migrant worker deaths, terrorism-financing lawsuits, and failed development projects. Although Wikipedia volunteers are said to have eventually uncovered many of these networks, investigators say the practice continues and may be growing. Experts say manipulating Wikipedia is especially dangerous because its content shapes public understanding worldwide and now feeds directly into AI-generated information, making it harder to correct once distorted.

To read how Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has admitted he no longer trusts the website, see this article on our website.