Altered video of Sri Lanka leader used to promote Philippine investment website
- Published on September 4, 2025 at 06:08
- 4 min read
- By Harshana SILVA, AFP Sri Lanka
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"Said could not speak a word in English. Now that's over too," reads a Sinhala-language Facebook post shared on August 27, 2025 in an apparent jibe targeting detractors of Dissanayake who have often mocked the leftist leader's English proficiency.
The post includes a video of Dissanayake speaking from a podium in English.
"I am proud to announce a unique investment opportunity in Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, the national leader in the energy sector of Sri Lanka," he says.
"I can personally guarantee the safety and reliability of this investment solution."
Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) is the Island nation's national oil and gas company established in 1962 (archived link).
The clip was shared in similar posts elsewhere on Facebook.
Sri Lanka has seen a spike in online scams through social media platforms in recent times (archived link).
Media organisation Daily Mirror reported that in the first quarter of 2025, Sri Lanka's Computer Emergency Readiness Team received 2,887 cybercrime-related complaints, of which 364 were financial fraud cases (archived link).
Manipulated audio
The investment scheme promoted in the posts is baseless.
"Neither the President nor the Government of Sri Lanka has initiated, launched, or announced any investment scheme with the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation," Prasanna Perera, head of the President's Media division told AFP on August 28.
"The video is a scam."
A Google reverse image search of keyframes from the clip found a longer video shared on Dissanayake's official Facebook page on August 10 (archived link).
"The country's future development path cannot be chosen without abandoning its historical heritage and culture," reads its Sinhala-language caption.
The president talked about the South Asian nation's history and culture in the video and made no mention of any investment scheme.
Dissanayake's mouth is not also synced with the words he appears to say in the clip circulating on Facebook.
AFP extracted the audio from the false Facebook post and analysed it using InVid-WeVerify's audio detection tool. The result indicated a 99% possibility of the audio being created artificially (archived link).
Philippine investment website
The post, which has now been taken down, links to a website of a purported Philippine investment advisory firm.
An AFP reporter contacted the number on the website but was told that the number belonged to another bank.
A Google search for the same contact number also led to at least three other websites not related to any investment services.
A keyword search of the same website on Meta's Ad Library reveals active ads that started running on August 27, 2025 (archived link).
The ads lead to what appears to be a website of Sri Lanka's media organisation Daily Mirror that featured the same digitally altered video (archived link).
But the report was not published by the Daily Mirror.
"In fact this is a fake online portal which has copied the Daily Mirror logos and circulating articles on the web and social media," Jamila Husain, editor-in-chief of Sri Lanka's Daily Mirror newspaper told AFP on September 3, 2025.
AFP has previously debunked misinformation related to similar online scam in Sri Lanka here.
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