The spokesperson for Bugatti, Nicole Auger, told USA Today that the wife of the President of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, is not a client of Bugatti. The page on which the misinformation about her buying a Bugatti car worth 4.5 million euros first surfaced was likely created using artificial intelligence, and the receipt presented as supposed evidence is false. Bugatti has announced lawsuits due to the misuse of their brand, writes Truthmeter.mk.
Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text in full below:
We are fact-checking post on Facebook (as seen here and here), that share the same content in which it is claimed that:
Zelenskyy’s wife became owner of the latest Bugatti worth 4.5 million euros.
The text in the posts (here and here) are almost identical and contain the same allegations that Olena Zelenska, wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, ordered a Bugatti automobile worth 4.5 million euros, paid for it in advance, and will receive it in 2026 when it is produced as one of a series of only 250 such cars. Both posts quote a specific site, Verite Cachee France, and state that the car order was placed during Zelensky and his wife’s visit to France on the anniversary of the Normandy landing. It also states that “a private automobile fair was organized, two weeks before the official public presentation” just for them.
However, this is disinformation that has been debunked by several reputable global media outlets.
The site Verite Cachee France, where the disinformation was first published, features a fake receipt for the purchase of the Bugatti car.
The receipt contains numerous typographical errors, such as the misspelling of the Paris suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. In the section where the address should be, required information about sales tax is missing, and there is no mention of the payment method or the currency in which the supposed sale took place, writes Deutsche Welle.
The website itself, Verite Cachee France, where the disinformation was initially published, is yet another indicator that the story was fabricated. The text fooled social media users and some media outlets because it was made to look like a normal tabloid article. However, there are enough signs on the text and website to indicate that the text was created with artificial intelligence. Additionally, the site itself had all the hallmarks of a troll site. No author names or publication dates are listed on any of its articles. The images are also awkwardly cropped, likely a result of poor programming.
Perhaps the biggest red flag [regarding the website’s unreliability] is the fact that nearly every article featured on the page starts with the words “Voici un titre court pour l’article” (Here’s a short title for the article). This gives rise to the suspicion that someone or something (like a computer program) tasked an artificial intelligence chatbot with creating titles for articles and then posted the entire response on the page, writes Deutsche Welle.
The car manufacturer Bugatti refuted the claim of an alleged purchase of an automobile by Olena Zelenska. Additionally, the company announced that they would file a criminal complaint for forgery and defamation. The receipt that spread online (the same one featured on one of the posts we are fact-checking), is not real. There are numerous missing legal and financial details.
Nicole Auger, a spokesperson for Bugatti, told USA Today that the claim was false.
Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. is aware of reports that are suggesting a recent purchase of a Bugatti vehicle by Mrs. Olena Zelenska, the First Lady of Ukraine. Bugatti respects the privacy of its customers and does not normally disclose any information about its customers. In this case, Bugatti makes an exception because it is a false report and does not correspond to the truth. According to an internal check, Mrs. Zelenska is not a Bugatti customer, she said.
The disinformation was also debunked by the Center for Countering Disinformation, which is a body within the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. The claim was also refuted by Bugatti Paris.
In a comprehensive analysis, the BBC notes that the misleading website in question was just one of a large number of sites created to spread Russian propaganda aimed at American voters ahead of the US elections. The Zelenskyy family has long been a target of a disinformation campaign aimed at portraying them as misusers of Western aid for defense against Russia.
Due to all the above-noted facts, we assess the fact-checked posts as untrue.
