Is there any evidence for a story being spread online about "Olena K.", a Ukrainian anti-corruption official who supposedly defected to Europe and revealed real-estate corruption involving President Zelenskyy worth $1.2 billion ? No, that's not true: The story did not contain any verifiable details or documents and no media reported on the supposed events. The London Telegraph, the website where the story originated, was only registered in August 2025 and the profile picture of the journalist who supposedly wrote the story was stolen from the social media profile of a different journalist.
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:
‼️🇺🇦💰 #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. pic.twitter.com/VZcZ6VO4Sg
-- Maimunka News (@MaimunkaNews) August 26, 2025
The video quoted a website called "London Telegraph" as the source, and there indeed was an article (archived here) published on that site on the same date, titled "Ukraine's anti-corruption official exposes Zelensky's $1.2B real estate empire.". It opened:
A former investigator from Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) has defected to Europe with what she describes as "thousands of pages of internal files" detailing systemic corruption at the highest levels of power in Kyiv.
The defector, identified as "Olena K", has overseen a task force tracking offshore wealth transfers tied to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his closest confidants. Serhiy Shefir, Timur Mindich, Svitlana Pishchanska and other longtime allies operated a complex web of shell companies across Cyprus, Luxembourg, and the Caribbean. These entities were used to acquire over one hundred luxury properties abroad on behalf of the president and his family.
The story claims the existence of "files" concerning:
purchase contracts and bank transfers linking Zelensky's circle to high-end assets across Europe including 26 properties in Spain, including seaside villas in Marbella and penthouses in Barcelona, 14 properties in UK, including a Chelsea riverside estate, 21 properties in France mostly along the Côte d'Azur. The list also includes 8 properties in Italy and 34 luxury apartments in UAE.
However the story provides none of these files and it doesn't list the exact details of the properties, making it impossible to verify if they even exist.
Searches on Google News and Yahoo News for stories mentioning the words "Olena K." "defect" and "europe" did not return any results (archived here and here), making it doubtful the alleged high profile defection actually happened.
The domain name of the website of the London Telegraph was only registered on August 14, 2025 according to WHOIS data (archived here), less than two weeks before the story was published.
The story was bylined "Charlotte Davies" and it used following profile picture:
(Image source: screenshot of London Telegraph website)
However a reverse image search showed the image was taken from the X profile of a U.K. journalist named Helen Brown (archived here):
(Image source: screenshot of Helen Brown profile on X)
