A slick video circulating online claims Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy secretly controls a $1.2 billion overseas real-estate empire through shell companies and a defected anti-corruption investigator known only as “Olena K.” Euronews’ EuroVerify team says there is no evidence for any of it.
According to EuroVerify, the clip alleges “Olena K,” described as a former National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) investigator, fled “to Europe” with thousands of pages of internal files supposedly showing luxury properties in Spain, France, Italy, the UK, and the UAE tied to Zelenskyy and allies. It even asserts that “on paper, Zelenskyy owns nothing; in reality, he owns everything.” But EuroVerify found no reputable reporting on any such agent, no documents, and no verifiable trail of transactions.
Investigators also flagged basic provenance problems. Many posts boost the video alongside a site calling itself “The London Telegraph,” a name that blends real British outlets to mimic legitimacy. The domain ends in “.uk” — not the standard “.co.uk” or “.com” — and the site appears buggy with little content beyond the Zelenskyy article, which repeats familiar Kremlin talking points, EuroVerify reported. The byline’s profile page could not be accessed, and other fact-checkers have said the photo shown for the supposed author was lifted from a legitimate, unrelated journalist.
EuroVerify added that the robotic-sounding narration of video further undercut its credibility. The site also said that Zelenskyy and his wife, Olena Zelenska, are often the subject of misleading information that is meant to undercut support for Kyiv during the war. There have also been false allegations going around about buying a villa in Florida and a fancy sports car.
The story was being spread in the form of an online video on X (archived here) published on August 26, 2025 with a caption that read:
#Ukraine’s anti-corruption official exposes #Zelensky’s $1.2B real estate empire. It shows that US taxpayers were just funding the largest corruption scheme in the world. Not another dime.
This is what the video looked like:
Bottom line: There is no public evidence of a $1.2 billion property portfolio or a defected NABU insider. The latest allegations fit a pattern of frauds aimed at discrediting Ukraine’s leadership while the country fights Russia’s invasion. (With inputs from Euronews/EuroVerify; article published Sept. 2, 2025.)
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