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| - Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy buy the French bank Milleis in February 2025 using the offshore company Maltex? No, that's not true: No credible media organization reported this story, as of March 6, 2025. A viral video purporting to be a TV news report about it displayed a non-existent TV channel logo. And the video contained inauthentic, AI-generated audio, according to two AI detectors.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on March 5, 2025. It opened:
Just weeks before refusing to sign Trump's minerals deal, Zelensky used his offshore company Maltex to purchase one of the biggest private equity banks in France - Milleis Banque for €1.2 billion. US tax payers' money hard at work! DOGE must take a look at this!
The post included a video in which a person standing next to a building with the Milleis Banque logo was speaking in French on camera. The English subtitles, simultaneously appearing in the clip, read:
...and behind my back is the office of Milleis Banque, the third-largest entity in the French wealth management with €13 billion in assets. As we recently found out, in the beginning of February, it was acquired by Maltex Muticapital Corp.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Mar 6 15:06:21 2025 UTC)
However, a Google search for the keywords seen here (archived here) showed that no credible media outlets reported the story about the purported acquisition of the French bank between January and March 2025:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Thu Mar 6 15:18:21 2025 UTC)
In an interview (archived here) published by the French newspaper Le Figaro on February 23, 2025, Milleis Managing Director Nicolas Hubert (archived here) said nothing about the sale of the bank.
A Google search for the TV channel logo seen in the clip on X showed no matches to real TV channel logos:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Tue Mar 6 16:35:42 2025 UTC)
After a brief on-camera appearance of the French-speaking person, the video cut to what appeared to be a TV news report with graphics and voice-over.
Lead Stories found a downloadable, better-quality version of the video on a Russian-language account on Telegram (archived here) and tested the audio track for authenticity.
Two AI detectors, Hiya via InVid verification plugin (archived here) and DeepFake-o-Meter (archived here) found the overwhelming presence of voice cloning:
(Source: InVid screenshot taken on Thu Mar 6 17:58:49 2025 UTC)
(Source: DeepFake-o-Meter screenshot taken on Thu Mar 6 18:08:48 2025 UTC)
Previously, Lead Stories debunked a similar claim about Zelenskyy allegedly buying "€88 million hotel" In a Courchevel ski resort in France, which derived from a similarly styled unsubstantiated video mimicking a news report. Made-up stories about the supposed extravagant purchases have been targeting the Ukrainian president throughout the Russian-Ukrainian war.
The account that made a claim reviewed in this fact check contained the words "parody account" its self-description(archived here).
Lead Stories reached out to Milleis Banque for additional comments.
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Volodymyr Zelenskyy can be found here.
Stories about the claims concerning the Russian-Ukrainian war are here.
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