STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Fake Website

Does a video prove that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy bought a hotel in Courchevel, France, for 88 million euros ($93 million) in November 2024? No, that's not true: The video was based on a screenshot of a fake website mimicking the online page of a currently closed hotel. The current owner of the hotel described the posts sharing the video as "fake news" in an email to Lead Stories.

The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on November 28, 2024. It began:

Zelensky has purchased €88 million hotel in Courchevel ski resort in France.

Courchevel is known to be wildly popular with billionaires, Hollywood celebrities and British royals.

In case you were wondering how your tax dollars are being spent. Repost this So THEY KNOW that we know what is happening!

This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:

(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Dec 5 17:47:08 2024 UTC)

The account that posted the clip had a self-attached parody label in its bio (archived here).

The Palace des Neiges was acquired (archived here) by its current owner, the Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer (archived here), also referred to as SBM, in October 2023 (archived here). In April 2024 the company started a renovation, and in September 2024, when SBM published its most recent report (archived here), the hotel was still listed among its assets (pages 11-13) (archived here).

On December 6, 2024, an SBM representative shared the company's statement with Lead Stories via email:

Palace des Neiges was acquired by Monte-Carlo SBM in October 2023 to integrate its portfolio. The information reported by this tweet is fake news. The SBM group is currently renovating the hotel, with a view to opening in December 2026, as owner and operator.

The footage appears to have originated on November 27, 2024 (archived here) from an obscure French-language website (archived here) that didn't disclose anything about its creators.

The minute-and-a-half video narrated in French mimicked a newscast. At the 0:03 mark, English subtitles read:

... Palace des Neiges, the resort of Courchevel, in France, in Savoie. It previously belonged to the SBM Group and was sold a month ago to a new owner.

After that, at the 0:23 mark, a photo of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared on the screen. At the 0:31 mark, the subtitles continued:

The company Film Heritage Inc, registered in Belize that belongs to Zelensky, purchased the hotel. It's also mentioned on the hotel's official website hotelpalacedesneiges.com.

As of this writing, the said page was already offline, but its saved versions were still available. None of the archived copies purportedly showing a website of a French hotel was in French.

That was not the only sign casting doubts on the authenticity of the page. According to the ICANN lookup tool, the website from the video was registered only on November 22, 2024:

(Source: ICANN screenshot taken on Thu Dec 5 18:14:43 2024 UTC)

As of this writing, the hotel was still closed (archived here).

Yet, the French version of the real hotel's website (archived here) was still live. Its name didn't include the word "hotel" and did not show any mentions of Film Heritage at the bottom of the page. This is what that section looked like, as of this writing:

(Source: Palacedesneiges.com screenshot taken on Thu Dec 5 18:25:23 2024 UTC)

Lead Stories checked a previously archived version of the page from November 30, 2024, and it didn't mention "Film Heritage," either.

The real website has been online since 2007:

(Source: ICANN screenshot taken on Thu Dec 5 18:16:08 2024 UTC)

Other versions of the hotel's website -- in English and Russian -- led to the current owners announcing (archived here) the resort's 2026 reopening under a new name.

As of this writing, the present owner's corporate website made no mention of an entity named "Film Heritage" (archived here).

A search for the hotel's old name used in the claim and the name of the purported new buyer (archived here) across Google News showed only fact checks reviewing the same claim.

Ukraine's government Center for Countering Disinformation (archived here) described the claim as a "fake report."

Lead Stories previously debunked other claims about extravagant purchases falsely attributed to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Those fact checks can be found here and here.