Zelensky did not purchase French private bank

"A French video is circulating alleging Zelenskys offshore company was involved in buying a French Bank," says a March 6, 2025 X post from Chay Bowes, a Moscow-based Irish journalist previously accused of spreading Kremlin-friendly disinformation.

"The unverified report says Milleis Banque was bought via his offshore Co. Maltex for approx €1.2B."

The post includes a French-language video, supposedly showing a news report from a broadcaster called "TV12" reporting on the acquisition. The video's chyron says a corporation with ties to Zelensky bought the bank for between 1.1 billion and 1.25 billion euros ($1.19 billion to $1.36 billion dollars).

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Screenshot from X taken March 12, 2025

The same claim has circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, TikTok, YouTube, Rumble and Gettr -- including in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Czech and Bulgarian. It was also reported by several other news websites, including the state-owned broadcaster Russia Today and a network of sites the French government has accused of pushing pro-Moscow narratives. 

The posts are the latest example of disinformation targeting Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials, and follow false claims that he has bought vast estates and luxury goods or is stealing public money.

In 2021, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found Zelensky had gifted a stake in Maltex Muticapital Corporation, based in the British Virgin Islands, to a business partner and aid soon before being elected in 2019. The reporting, based on a leak of financial documents from offshore financial services companies known as the Pandora Papers, showed that while Zelensky had given away his shares, dividends from the company were still being directed into another company owned by his wife (archived here).

However, there is no evidence Maltex has purchased a French financial institution.

Bank not sold

In 2017, the British firm AnaCap Financial Partners purchased Milleis Banque Privée from Barclays and later merged it with another investment services company, making it the third largest independent wealth manager in France (archived here and here).

A spokesperson for Milleis Banque Privée said the bank had not been sold to Maltex and that AnaCap still owned a majority stake in it.

"Milleis Banque Privée has become aware of the false information circulating on certain social networks. We formally deny these allegations," a spokesperson for the bank said in a March 12 email in French.

A spokesperson for AnaCap referred AFP to the same statement.

Moreover, no sale or transfer of Milleis Bank has appeared in the Official Bulletin of Civil and Commercial Announcements, which lists financial transactions in France. 

France's trade registration database and the company's website also show AnaCap's managing partner still sits on Milleis Banque Privée's board of directors (archived here and here).

In a February 2025 interview with Le Figaro, Milleis Banque Privée chief executive Nicolas Hubert said AnaCap was "in no rush to leave" and that the bank's "identity" would "endure" for the foreseeable future (archived here).

Non-existent TV channel

The video attached to many of the posts also features several irregularities.

In the top-right corner of the roughly three-minute video is a logo for a broadcaster called "TV12," but a reverse image search using the logo did not bring up any results. There was a French television channel called NRJ12, which did not have a similar logo, and went off the air on March 1, 2025, after media regulators found it failed to comply with laws.

As evidence of the acquisition, the presenter shows a copy of an audit, supposedly conducted by the British accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for Maltex ahead of the deal. However, a spokesperson for PwC said the document was a "gross forgery" in a March 11 email.

Company register documents also show Milleis Banque Privée currently uses London-based Ernst and Young and Paris-based Forvis Mazars as its statutory auditors (archived here).

The video also uses a segment from BBC News's theme music multiple times (archived here).

The video is similar to one that AFP debunked in December 2024, falsely accusing Zelensky of purchasing a French ski resort through a shell corporation. The clip used the logo of a fictitious news broadcaster, showed falsified documents of a supposed corporate merger and used information about Zelensky from the Pandora Papers.

AFP has fact-checked other claims about the war in Ukraine here.

Alexis Orsini contributed to this report.