Did Russia issue an international arrest warrant for billionaires Jacob Rothschild and George Soros? No, that's not true: Variations of this hoax have circulated for years. While Russia banned two charities run by Soros in 2015, the Kremlin said an international arrest warrant was never sought for him. Lead Stories found no evidence of an arrest warrant ever being issued for Rothschild in a Google news search.
The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) on March 24, 2022. It had a video that included a screenshot of an article titled "Russia Issues International ARREST WARRANT For ROTHSCHILD & SOROS!" The caption reads:
wow
This is what the Facebook post looked like on March 30, 2022:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Mar 30 14:21:17 2022 UTC)
The Facebook video runs just 11 seconds. In it, a man appears in front of a CS Globe article from 2015 with the headline "Russia Issues International ARREST WARRANT For ROTHSCHILD & SOROS!" The article features images of Putin, Rothschild and Soros. With dramatic music playing underneath, the man in the video gazes up at the headline and then looks at the camera as if to say, "Do you see this?" and the video ends.
A different version of the claim from March 27, 2012, appears on YouTube:
And another version of the claim from July 9, 2015, appears on the meme, video and GIF site iFunny:
(Source: iFunny screenshot taken on Wed Mar 30 17:42:03 2022 UTC)
There are other articles promoting the same false claim that can be found elsewhere (here, here and here).
Rothschild, Soros and their families are popular targets for far-right conspiracy theories, often surrounding their wealth and claims they control or hold great power over global financial systems. Lead Stories has previously debunked claims about the Rothschild family (here) and Soros (here, here, here, here and here).
