Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 18/12/2023; Author: Nina Đuranović
The disinformation that the First Lady of Ukraine spent over a million dollars on expensive jewellery in New York has already been addressed by our online portal. In recent days, as part of the same narrative, claims that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, bought two luxury yachts have become viral in the media and on social networks.
This information appeared on the Montenegrin online portal IN4S, as well as in some regional media outlets, only to be enthusiastically received by some Facebook users. (1, 2, 3)
“Everything is coming to light! Ukraine is disappearing, Ukrainians are dying en masse, while Zelensky buys two yachts.”
The claim that Zelensky bought two yachts whose prices exceeded 75 million dollars appeared even in the foreign language area.
However, the facts speak the opposite.
Namely, the yacht bearing the name Lucky Me is owned by the company BehneMar, while the company Burgess is the owner of the other yacht named My Legacy.
Spokespersons of these two companies said to AP that the mentioned luxury yachts are still available for purchase on the market.
An analysis performed by our fact-checking platform has shown that the “news” about the purchase of luxury yachts by the President of Ukraine originated from foreign portals that shared a YouTube video in which a man identified as Shahzad Nasir shared an “interesting discovery”. Specifically, in the video, he claims to have “purchase contracts that prove that Zelensky secretly bought yachts through his intermediaries.”
Upon the analysis of the documentation shown in the video, AP pointed out that the documents are edited forms available for free download on the Internet. This means that anyone can become the owner of any yacht, even virtually, simply by modifying the “Memorandum of Agreement approved by the Mediterranean Yacht Brokers Association.”
As a matter of fact, the Mediterranean Yacht Brokers Association represents the old name of the organization, which changed its name to The Worldwide Yachting Association MYBA in 2008.
Jane Adlington-Brumer, the Secretary-General of MYBA, confirmed in a statement to AP that the document represents a modified version of the Memorandum of Agreement dating back to 2012, “which MYBA no longer supports.”
Considering that advertisements for yachts claimed to have been bought by the Ukrainian president are still active on the companies’ websites and that the alleged purchase contracts are nothing but edited forms available online for download and editing, these features are rated as fake news.
The “Fake news” rating is given to an original media report (completely produced by the media that published it) that contains factually incorrect claims or information. Content that is rated as fake news can be reliably determined to have been created and disseminated with the intent to misinform the public, that is, to present a completely false claim as fact.
