Slovenia Alleges Black Cube Meddled in Election as Brussels Weighs New Democracy Shield

On a cold December afternoon in Ljubljana, three visiting businessmen made an unremarkable stop at a nondescript office block on Trstenjakova Street. Months later, Slovenian intelligence officials would allege that the men were not businessmen at all, but operatives of Black Cube, a controversial private Israeli intelligence firm, paying an “extended” visit to the headquarters of Slovenia’s main opposition party.

That visit, on Dec. 10 and 11, 2025, now sits at the center of a growing scandal over alleged foreign interference in Slovenia’s March 22 parliamentary election — a contest that ended in a virtual tie and a hung parliament.

Within days of the vote, the government said its intelligence and security agency had “unequivocally confirmed foreign influences” on the election, including activity by a “foreign para-intelligence agency” operating in contact with Slovenian actors. Officials and earlier government statements point to Black Cube, best known for its work for disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and covert operations in Hungary and Romania.

The affair has unsettled an already polarized country and spilled into European Union politics, where Ljubljana is pressing Brussels to treat the case as the first real-world test of the bloc’s new defenses against interference in democratic processes.

A tight race under a cloud

Slovenians went to the polls on March 22 to choose a new National Assembly. Prime Minister Robert Golob’s liberal Freedom Movement won about 28.5% of the vote and 29 seats, according to preliminary results. The conservative Slovenian Democratic Party, or SDS, led by veteran politician Janez Janša, finished just behind with roughly 28.1% and 28 seats.

No party came close to the 46 seats needed for a majority. President Nataša Pirc Musar urged parties to begin coalition talks quickly, warning that political uncertainty could drag on.

Four days later, the National Security Council met in Ljubljana to hear from intelligence officials. Afterward, the government released a brief but stark statement: the Slovenian Intelligence and Security Agency, known domestically as SOVA, had “unequivocally confirmed foreign influences on last weekend’s parliamentary election.”

The agency had presented “concrete activities of a foreign para-intelligence agency and contacts with Slovenian entities,” the statement said, adding that evidence had been handed to prosecutors and police.

The March 26 document did not name Black Cube. But government statements issued in the days before the vote, and briefings by senior officials, had already put the firm at the heart of their concerns.

Covert recordings and smear tactics

On March 18, after a meeting of the National Security Council Secretariat, State Secretary for National and International Security Vojko Volk told reporters that SOVA had identified “direct foreign interference in elections” carried out “at the behest of persons from Slovenia.”

He named Black Cube as a key actor and described a covert operation designed to politically damage targets ahead of the vote.

According to Volk, operatives used fake online profiles, including on LinkedIn, and shell companies to approach Slovenian political and business figures under false identities. Meetings were held in hotels and public places, sometimes outside Slovenia. Conversations were secretly recorded, he said, and then edited material was timed for release shortly before election day.

“The aim of the operation is political discrediting,” Volk said, warning that such activities threatened “national security and democratic electoral processes.” He added that, at that point, the actual conduct of the vote did not appear to be under direct threat.

During the campaign, videos of what appeared to be secretly recorded conversations surfaced online, showing people described as close to the governing camp boasting about their access and influence. The recordings were quickly picked up by some media and used to attack Golob’s government over alleged corruption and cronyism. Authorities now say those videos are part of the investigation into unlawful audio and video recording.

On March 20, SOVA director Joško Kadivnik gave a more detailed briefing to the National Security Council’s operational group. He said the agency had “material evidence” linking three identified Black Cube representatives — retired Israeli general Giora Eiland, Liron Tzur and company co-founder Dan Zorella — to their December visit to Trstenjakova Street 8 in Ljubljana, the registered headquarters of SDS.

Kadivnik said SOVA’s findings on the group’s activities in Slovenia and abroad indicated “counterintelligence operations against Slovenia and foreign interference in Slovenian elections.” He said the evidence had been passed to police.

Police Director General Damjan Petrič later said investigators were examining possible criminal offenses including unlawful recording, bribery, abuse of office, disclosure of classified information and crimes against honor and reputation. As of early April, no indictments have been made public.

Who hired them?

Key questions remain unanswered in public: who commissioned any Black Cube work in Slovenia, and what impact, if any, it had on how people voted.

Government statements say the operation was carried out on behalf of “persons from Slovenia” but do not name a client. Officials have repeatedly stressed that much of the underlying intelligence is classified.

The political implications are delicate. Janša and SDS acknowledge that there were contacts with Black Cube but deny hiring the firm or breaking the law.

According to statements reported by Slovenian and international media, Janša has said he met an adviser linked to Black Cube and rejected any suggestion of illegal behavior. He argues that Golob’s government is weaponizing the intelligence services to delegitimize an election it nearly lost.

SDS has described the accusations as politically motivated and has questioned the timing of the disclosures, which dominated headlines in the final days of the campaign and in the immediate aftermath of the vote.

Golob rejects that criticism. In Brussels on March 19, on the sidelines of an EU summit, he said “influence on democracy must never be exercised from the shadows,” calling the alleged interference “a serious attack on the foundations of European democracy, whoever ordered it and whoever carried it out.”

A private spy firm with a political trail

Black Cube, formally BC Strategy Ltd., is a private intelligence company based in Tel Aviv and London. It promotes itself as a corporate investigations firm staffed largely by former intelligence officers, providing services for clients involved in lawsuits, commercial disputes and fraud cases.

It has also been at the center of several high-profile political operations.

In Romania in 2016, two Black Cube operatives were arrested and later admitted involvement in a plot targeting Laura Codruța Kövesi, then the country’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor. Romanian authorities said the aim was to discredit her. In Hungary in 2018, covert recordings of staff at organizations linked to financier George Soros, used by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in an anti-NGO campaign, were traced to methods associated with Black Cube. The firm later said it had “no relation whatsoever” to the Hungarian government but acknowledged conducting private investigations involving some of the same figures.

In an emailed statement responding to questions about Slovenia, Black Cube said it provides intelligence services for corporate clients, particularly in the context of litigation and white-collar crime, and that it seeks legal advice in every jurisdiction where it operates. It said it would “continue to discover the truth and uncover fraud and corruption worldwide, as it has done for 15 years.” The company did not address Slovenia or SDS by name.

Brussels watches closely

Beyond Slovenia’s borders, the case is drawing attention because it touches on the European Union’s new efforts to shield its democracies from covert interference.

On March 19, Golob sent a formal letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, with copies to European Council President António Costa and leaders of the liberal Renew Europe bloc. In it, he described Black Cube’s activities in Slovenia as “mercenary surveillance” in a “coordinated operation to manipulate Slovenia’s electoral processes” through illegal surveillance and smear tactics.

He argued that similar operations in Hungary and Romania showed the problem was not confined to Slovenia. He called the case “a direct challenge” to the EU’s recently launched European Democracy Shield and urged the Commission to instruct the new European Centre for Democratic Resilience to carry out an immediate threat assessment.

As of early April, the Commission has not announced specific measures in response. Some members of the European Parliament and national politicians have seized on the case to argue for stronger, EU-wide safeguards against “intelligence-for-hire” meddling in domestic politics.

Uncertain impact, lasting questions

For now, the practical impact of the alleged interference on Slovenia’s election remains unclear. International observers have not reported irregularities in the voting or counting itself. The influence campaign described by SOVA operated in the information space, not at ballot boxes.

Yet in an election decided by less than half a percentage point, even small shifts in public perception could be significant — a point underscored by both sides of Slovenia’s political divide, for different reasons.

As coalition talks proceed, the next government will take office under a cloud defined in sharply different terms: by the prime minister as a “serious attack” on democracy by a foreign intelligence contractor, and by his main rival as a story inflated for domestic political gain.

How Slovenian prosecutors, courts and lawmakers handle the case, and how the EU chooses to respond, will help determine whether the scandal becomes an isolated episode or a template for how private intelligence is used — and controlled — in European politics.