Did Israeli-based news outlet Haaretz report that Zelenskyy's former associate Timur Mindich fled to Israel carrying "800kg of gold" on a private jet? No, that's not true: The claim shared in viral posts originated from a counterfeit website that mimicked Haaretz. No credible news organizations reported on "800kg of gold" supposedly carried by Mindich on board the plane bound for Israel.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by @Partisangirl on May 27, 2026. It opened:
🚨 Zelensky's longtime business partner Timur Mindich fled Ukraine to Israel on a private jet with 800kg of gold + millions in cash -- just hours before NABU raided his home. https://haaretz24.com/ukraine-seeks-israels-help-to-trace-private-jet-loaded-with-800kg-of-gold-cash-and-corruption-suspect-tied-to-zelensky/
This is what a thumbnail from the shared video looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @Partisangirl on X.)
As seen in the image above, the attached clip displayed the Haaretz logo. The caption also included a link that mentioned the name of the Israeli newspaper. However, the real Haaretz did not produce the report in question.
The link led to a bogus website that was five days old, according to its registration data (archived here):
(Image source: DomainTools.)
Haaretz (archived here) is an Israeli newspaper founded in 1919 that launched an English-language website in 1997 (archived here), and that platform's name -- haaretz.com -- does not have any digits in it.
When Lead Stories ran the article from the bogus website through AI detection tool GPTZero, it said that the story was 100% likely to have been generated by AI:
(Image source: GPTZero.)
A search across the real English-language Haaretz website for the opening sentence from the article in question did not produce any results:
(Image source: Haaretz.com.)
A very broad search across the publication's website for Mindich's last name only showed two results, but none of those articles was dated May 2026, and none of them made the specific claim reviewed in this fact check:
(Image source: Haaretz.com.)
A Google search for Mindich's last name on the website of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, also known as NABU, showed no announcements mentioning him at all:
(Image source: Google.)
Timur Mindich (also known as Tymur Mindich) (archived here), once a close associate of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was implicated in a major corruption scandal and left the country for Israel (archived here). As of late May 2026, however, the latest update in that saga was that Mindich sued (archived here) Zelenskyy over the sanctions imposed on him by Ukraine.
Lead Stories reviewed the documentary published by Ukrainska Pravda, which located Mindich in Israel. The automatically generated transcript of the documentary did not contain the word "gold" at all.
(Image source: YouTube.)
A search on Google News for the keywords from the claim (archived here) did not show any credible journalistic organizations publishing such reports:
(Image source: Google.)
According to InVID's AI detection tool Hiya, the voice-over from the video shared in the post reviewed in this fact check was 99% likely produced by AI-powered voice-cloning technology:
(Image source: InVID.)
