Posts falsely claim French president ordered €148 million bunker to prepare for World War III
- Published on October 15, 2025 at 15:25
- 6 min read
- By Dounia MAHIEDDINE, AFP France, AFP Ethiopia
- Translation and adaptation Tolera FIKRU GEMTA
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More than three years after the start of the Ukraine war, French President Emmanuel Macron declared in late September 2025 that the response from NATO countries would have to "go up a notch" in the event of "new provocations" from Russia. Following this, posts on Facebook and X claim Macron was investing in the construction of a private luxury bunker valued at 148 million euros (about $172 million) in anticipation of World War III. However, these posts are based on a fake report, falsified documents, and phony sources. AFP Fact Check found no evidence to back these claims, which bear the hallmarks of pro-Russian disinformation campaigns.
A caption of a video post circulating on Facebook in Nigeria claims: “French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly investing €148 million in a private underground bunker.”
“Swiss company Oppidum, known for constructing luxury bunkers, is said to be involved in the project,” adds the post.
The video is presented in the style of a news report, with a French voiceover and English subtitles.
“At the same time as French President Emannuel Macron is actively calling for preparing hospitals for war, undertaking rearmament of military forces and preparing for World War III, he has not forgotten to look after his own future,” the English subtitles read.
The video goes on to claim the French president is preparing for World War III by building a "luxury bunker” for 148 million euros.
The video shows illustrative images of a bunker and an alleged transfer order for 50 million euros from French bank Société Générale, dated September 4, 2025. It is in the name of Alexis Kohler, former secretary general of the Élysée Palace, and is made out to Oppidum Bunkers GmbH, a Swiss company known for building luxury underground bunkers.
“Independent media have revealed the plans of the President of the Fifth Republic to build a luxurious underground bunker for himself with a surface area over 1,500m²,” the English subtitles read.
A longer version of the video was first shared on X in French, including in this post by a user known to AFP for spreading false information favourable to Russia. His post was shared more than 2,000 times and has more than a million views.
AFP Fact Check debunked the claim in French here.
The same claim was also shared in English on Facebook and Instagram.
Macron’s statement
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, pro-Russian propaganda has flooded social media and targeted European countries in an attempt to undermine Western support for Ukraine.
On September 24, after Russia was blamed for drone incursions into NATO members Poland and Romania, Macron said that the NATO alliance would have to "go up a notch" in the case of "new provocations" (archived here).
A week later, he called on Europeans to organise, in "close coordination" with NATO, to "increase pressure" on the fleet of clandestine ships used by Russia to circumvent Western sanctions on oil (archived here).
However, the video claiming that Macron ordered a multimillion-euro bunker to prepare for World War III is false.
Company no longer exists
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, luxury bunkers have gained popularity among the ultra-wealthy. Figures like Mark Zuckerberg are now investing considerable sums in self-contained, ultra-secure residences (archived here and here).
In this context, Oppidum, a Swiss company founded in 2020 by Czech entrepreneur Jakub Zamrazil, positioned itself within the niche market of ultra-luxury bunkers. Promising exclusive underground residences valued at up to $100 million, the company built its reputation largely on sleek marketing visuals and digital renderings.
However, no real images of any completed facilities have been released. Only computer-generated illustrations exist online, including those reused in the false videos.
Oppidium no longer exists as it was placed into liquidation in the first half of 2025, months before the alleged transaction mentioned in the claims. This has been verified through several official sources, including the Swiss Commercial Register (archived here), as reported by Vrai ou Faux, the fact-checking service of French television channel "Franceinfo".
The company's website and X account have also been deactivated (archived here). However, the Wayback Machine, which allows access to earlier versions of web pages, does show a message from the company dated April 22, 2025, which reads: "Our operation is closed."
Furthermore, there are no traces of the purported Macron transaction in the numerous Tracfin reports available online. Tracfin is a financial intelligence unit under the authority of France's Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty.
The voices heard in the video report have accents that are difficult to identify. AFP Fact Check ran the audio from the video through an AI detector called Hiya, which is part of the InVID-WeVerify verification toolkit.
The results established a 98 percent probability that the audio was created artificially.
Fake personality
The French version of the claim also features a purported former Oppidum engineer named “José Meier”. However, there's no evidence to support this individual's existence or connection to the Swiss company. But his strong Slavic accent and oddly familiar appearance are notable.
According to members of the Gnida collective, which specialises in detecting digital interference operations, this man had already appeared in a previous disinformation campaign targeting the French presidency, where he pretended to be a 58-year-old surgeon called "François Faivre" (archived here ).
In July 2025, Éric Archambault — the same internet user who shared the false bunker video in French — claimed the alleged surgeon had been found dead in Paris, in connection with rumours targeting Brigitte Macron. AFP Fact Check published an article in French about this entirely fabricated hoax.
In an attempt to identify "François Faivre" or “José Meier” using the video footage and his photo portrait, AFP Fact Check used the facial recognition tool PimEyes. The result: an individual with similar features appears on the iStock image bank website of the Getty Images agency. According to the description of this photo, it was published on May 28, 2017 (archived here).
Furthermore, this same face appears in different adverts, without any apparent link (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5).
This suggests that the image of an actor or model was modified via artificial intelligence (AI) to deceive viewers — a method already documented by AFP Fact Check in other similar cases. Alternatively, it may simply be an image entirely generated by AI, with no real basis.
Imposter platform
The French posts also reference a website called "brutinfo.fr" to support the claim about Macron’s bunker. However, this impersonates the name of the well-known media outlet Brut.
This imposter platform claims that its articles are written by renowned journalists, whose identities it actually misrepresents. The alleged investigation into Emmanuel Macron's "luxury bunker", for example, is attributed to Benoît Vitkine, a journalist at French newspaper Le Monde.
Le Monde published an article indicating that the imposter website had been registered on September 28 with the Lithuanian host Hostinger, which is currently offline (archived here).
According to several experts cited by Le Monde, the evidence points to Storm-1516, a network already known for conducting pro-Russian disinformation campaigns. Linked to Kremlin-affiliated actors, the group spreads large volumes of false and misleading content targeting Western countries — particularly France and the United States.
Several fake news websites have been attributed to this network. These sites typically feature a mix of copied articles from legitimate media and AI-generated content to appear credible, before publishing fabricated stories aimed at undermining Ukraine and its allies.
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