At the beginning of July 2024, the media reported about a luxury car that the first lady of Ukraine allegedly purchased. We have checked whether this information is true.
The largest Russian media and Telegram channels with reference to the French publication Verite Сachee wrote that Elena Zelenskaya will soon become the owner of one of the most expensive production cars in the world - the Bugatti Tourbillon hypercar. The wife of the Ukrainian president allegedly placed a pre-order worth €4.5 million in June 2024, when she and her husband arrived to France for the 80th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy. As specified in the publications, Zelenskaya became the first owner of the new model, which will be produced in only 250 copies in 2026. As evidence, the Vérité Сachée website provides a video with a story from a certain Jacques Bertin, an employee of the Bugatti dealership in Paris, as well as a copy of the invoice.
This news was reported "RIA Novosti", Lenta.ru, "Russian newspaper", "Vesti.ru", "Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Arguments and facts", "News", News.ru and other publications. It has also become widespread on Telegram, including thanks to the channels “Live broadcast"(787,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Sanya in Florida"(449,000), "Pozdnyakov 3.0" (334,000) "Russia now" (210,000) and "Truthfulness"(199,000).
Presentation hypercar Bugatti Tourbillon took place on June 20, 2024. This is a new generation luxury car that can reach speeds of up to 445 km/h. It is already known that only 250 cars will be produced, production of which will begin in 2026. The expected price of one car is from €3.8 million.
The primary source of news about Zelenskaya’s expensive purchase is an online publication Verite Сachee (“hidden truth” - French). His website unfamiliar Google search engine if you limit your search results to dates no later than June 2024. According to the service Who.is, the domain name veritecachee.fr was registered on June 22, a few days before the news about the first lady of Ukraine and a luxury car was released.
The site does not have an “About Us” section, editorial contacts or a list of its employees. For some authors There is personal Pages that show only names, but no photos or email addresses. At the same time, their profiles indicate that employees began working for the publication on June 2, that is, almost three weeks before the site was registered. Each of them managed to write about 300 notes.
Most of the publications on the site are news, not investigative journalism. Although Vérité Сachée is a French-language publication, for some reason the publications are equipped with English-language rubricator tags.
The pages of the categories, which can be accessed via links in the site header, are designed at least sloppily. Such design mistakes are impossible for a real working media.
The news publications themselves look no less suspicious. For example, their titles are often begin with the words “Here is the short title of the article.”
And the first paragraph in some articles looks like this: “Here are some things to consider in context. The Republicans, Trump, Desantis and Russia are good, and the Democrats, Biden, the war in Ukraine, big business and the pharmaceutical industry are bad. If necessary, add additional information on the topic."
All this may indicate the use of artificial intelligence to prepare the bulk of the site’s pages. Probably, the authors gave a task to a chatbot like ChatGPT, and then copied the result along with prompts — perhaps because they didn’t know French very well.
As for the article about Zelenskaya published on July 1, there are no such errors or inaccuracies in this text. However, its content nevertheless raises questions. As evidence that the first lady of Ukraine purchased a car for €4.5 million, a video is provided, the author of which is presented as an employee of the Bugatti car dealership in Paris, Jacques Bertin.
Judging by the design of the video, it was published on Instagram. The account @jacques_bertin_ls, where the viral publication appeared, was already deactivated.
The video itself was likely generated by a neural network. In particular, every time Jacques Bertin opens his mouth, his teeth look different: sometimes both rows of teeth are visible, sometimes only two elongated upper front teeth, sometimes an even upper row. This characteristic a sign of videos created by artificial intelligence.
The person's Instagram profile photo, visible in the top left corner, is a screenshot from the video itself.
Fact checkers from the project Les Observateurs France 24 contacted the Bugatti Paris dealership and they said that a man named Jacques Bertin does not work for them.
Another piece of evidence presented in the Verité Сachée article is an invoice for payment for a car issued in the name of Elena Zelenskaya.
The details indicate the BSB number, which has nothing to do with France - it is used in Australia.
The name of the commune of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where the dealership is located, is misspelled: should to be Neuilly-sur-Seine, not Neuilly-sur-Seine.
The invoice does not indicate identification number VAT payer, used in EU countries.
Also, the document does not indicate the currency used to calculate the cost.
On July 2, 2024, the day after the scandalous news appeared, the official Instagram account of the Bugatti Paris dealership published statement, which categorically denied the fact of the deal with Zelenskaya. Representatives of the company pointed out a number of errors in the document, and also said that they would sue the authors of the forgery for falsifying documents.
Back on June 28, three days before the article about Zelenskaya appeared, the American cybersecurity company Recorded Future published report, which recorded the appearance of the site veritecachee.fr. Experts warned that the site will most likely be used to publish deepfakes, since it is part of discovered in March of this year, the CopyCop network. It unites several similar sites that masquerade as media and throw false information into the information space.
In October 2023, Russian media and Telegram channels reported about another expensive purchase that Zelenskaya made. During a visit to the United States, she allegedly purchased jewelry worth more than $1 million. Then, as evidence, an advertising article on a Nigerian news site, a fake invoice, and a video of an alleged Cartier boutique employee, played by a resident of St. Petersburg, were used as evidence.
Several months later, the scheme for creating a fake remained approximately the same, but the methods used by disinformers became more technologically advanced. However, this is not the first time information about the expensive purchases of the Zelensky couple has been thrown around in this way - “Verified” already sorted it out similar reports about the acquisition of luxury real estate by the Ukrainian president in different countries of the world. All this news turned out to be fake, and first appeared on fake websites imitating foreign media.
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons
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