No, this video does not show a 'stash' of cash belonging to an Indian politician
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on March 20, 2019 at 03:15
- 6 min read
- By AFP India
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Multiple Facebook posts, for example this one published March 12, 2019, and viewed around 1,700 times since, contain a video that appears to show a room filled with large piles of cash, some of which has been burnt.
The post's caption says, in English: "Cash Cash and Cash only.
One of Tamilnadu Politician - Fire in his godown Today - Currency burnt is meagre only. But see the stash of unaccounted money.
AIDMK As Receieved"
Tamil Nadu is a state in southern India. "Godown" is a word used in India to refer to a warehouse or other storage space.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:
The video with the same claim has been shared elsewhere on Facebook here and here, and on Twitter, for example here.
The same video was posted on Instagram here on February 27, 2019 by a user called Alejandro Monge, who is an artist based in Spain, according to his website here.
The Instagram post is embedded below:
The Instagram post's caption, in Spanish, refers to the rapid spread of misinformation online and says the 500-euro notes seen in the footage were painted by hand.
The caption says, in part: "It's one of the things about the internet that something can go viral without knowing why it does… and then nobody knows what it is or who it is from".
It also says: "If people knew what a sculpture is and knew the tickets are painted by hand… @monge-art share!!"
AFP contacted Monge, who said in an email, translated into English:
"The video was taken by a visitor to the ArtMadrid art fair in 2018 and a Dutch website published it without mentioning anything, so the decontextualised video was perfect for fake news websites around the world, we know it has been used in Haiti, Russia, Cameroon, Spain and Pakistan with different news stories linking it to local politicians.
"The sculpture was published on my Instagram page a year ago, including documenting the whole production process.
"The sculpture is made of resin and wood and the bills are coloured by hand with colouring pencils."
Below is an image comparing screenshots from the misleading Facebook post with screenshots from Monge's February 27 Instagram post, in which the footage has been cropped into a square-shaped frame:
Monge's installation, titled "The European Dream 2", was displayed at the 2018 ArtMadrid contemporary art festival, which ran from February 21-25, 2018, according to the festival's online catalogue here.
Marta Suarez-Mansilla, deputy director at ArtMadrid, told AFP by email: "We can certainly confirm that this artist participated in our former edition of Art Madrid Contemporary Art Fair".
She added: "Last year, the art fair took place from the 21st to the 25th of February 2018, and Alejandro Monge was represented by the gallery '3 Punts Galeria'. The exclusive artwork that he presented at the fair was 'The European Dream 2'"
The exhibit was also reported on at the time in this online video article published by regional daily newspaper Heraldo de Aragon on February 20, 2018.
Monge posted multiple photos and videos of the artwork on Instagram in February 2018 from different angles, showing how it was made, and of media coverage of the exhibition, for example here and here.
The image below contains screenshots of four of his Instagram posts showing the installation:
The same video of Monge’s work has been used to make similar false claims in other countries.
For example, Facebook posts like this one carried the same video in the context of a claim that the wife of a politician in Cameroon tried to burn 60 million pounds sterling to prevent police from finding it.
Here is a previous AFP fact-check on the use of the same video in misleading online posts in Pakistan.
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