Fact check: Ferrari video no sign of corruption in Venezuela
July 23, 2024
With Venezuela's presidential elections set for July 28, the spotlight is on the escalating battle between President Nicolas Maduro and his main rival, opposition frontrunner Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, as well as eight other candidates.
Maduro is seeking a third six-year term in a country known for having the world's largest oil reserves but also plagued by drug trafficking, money laundering, and corruption. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his family have repeatedly been accused of corruption by the Venezuelan opposition, human rights organizations, and the US government. DW has also reported on widespread corruption in Venezuela, referring in one article to a Transparency International report that classifies the Latin American country as the world's second-most corrupt country in the world. The Venezuelan government responded to that publication by taking DW Spanish off the air, with President Maduro calling DW a "Nazi" broadcaster.
In the weeks ahead of the elections, social media has been abuzz with allegations against Maduro’s only son, Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra. Many users have shared a video that shows two men getting into a Ferrari in Monte Carlo, Monaco, with claims that one of them is Maduro’s son. The video has garnered millions of views across platforms.
DW's fact-check team investigated the video and associated claims.
Claim: In one post on Xa user claims: "The son of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuelan socialist leader, in the Monte Carlo casino and driving a gold-plated Ferrari. This is socialism: hungry people and billionaire leaders." Attached to the post is the video allegedly showing Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra getting into a Ferrari in Monte Carlo, which had amassed around 2.9 million views at the time of publication. In the video, two men wearing sunglasses are seen walking down the stairs of a hotel and getting into what appears to be a gold-plated Ferrari California before driving away. Numerous other posts in different languages have shared the video across social media platforms, including TikTok,
DW Fact Check: False.
Neither of the men in the video resembles Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra. The video is nearly seven years old and time and again the individuals in it have been incorrectly identified as sons and family memebrs of various prominent leaders and politicians.
While many social media posts do not specify which man is supposed to be Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra, comparisons of both men in the video with images of Maduro's son reveal significant differences.
Maduro Guerra has a markedly different body build and noticeably distinctive physical features: The proportions of his feet to his body differ significantly from those of the individuals seen in the video. Additionally, his nose shape and the proportion of his neck to his body are visibly distinct from those shown in the images.
DW geolocated the video and confirmed it had been shot in Monte Carlo, Monaco’s most renowned district. Visual cues from the video, matched with Google Street View, revealed that it was shot in front of Hotel de Paris Monte Carlo, located a few meters away from Casino Monte Carlo.
A reverse image searchof one of the video's snapshots identified earlier versions, with one of the earliest uploads onYouTube dating back to July 27, 2017.
In the 10th second of the video, an advertising poster for Orlov Monte-Carlo jewelry is visible in the upper left corner. According to Orlov's official Facebook account, there was an exhibition of the brand's jewelry at the Hotel Metropole Monte Carlo from July 16 to August 27, 2017. In a phone call with DW, the Orlov branch in Monte Carlo confirmed that exhibitions were organized at different times in different places, ruling out the possibility that the poster in the video could have been related to events from previous years.
In 2017, Maduro Guerra's activities were extensively covered by national media reports because of his election campaign for Venezuela's National Assembly. It's unlikely that he was in Monaco at that time without any following media coverage, since his account on X posted numerous photos of him attending electoral events around that period.
Speaking to the Argentinian news channel G5N on July 2, 2024, Maduro Guerra dismissed the claims as rumors and said they were "a part of media warfare" against Venezuela.
Who owns the golden Ferrari?
Since 2017, the video has been attributed to several people. A Facebook post published in July 2017 alleged that one of the men in the car was the son of Carlos Romero Deschamps, the deceased ex-leader of Mexico's oil workers' union. Posts in Persianhave recurrently appeared on social media claiming that one person in the video is an Iranian ex-minister's son, who in actual fact looks very different from the men in the video. Brazilian users have alleged that the owner of the car is President Lula's son. In India, rumors have spread that the vehicle belongs to wealthy "Indian-Americans".
In a higher-resolution version of the video, the Latin letters B G A and the Arabic letters ا ب ق on the license plate are recognizable.
The number 1 on the license plate suggests the vehicle was purchased by a wealthy individual in Saudi Arabia, where unique and outstanding plate numbers are sometimes auctioned for millions of dollars.
The license plate corresponds to typical Saudi Arabian plates for private vehicles.
In July and August 2017, a spate of pictures began appearing online showing a gold Ferrari California with a similar license plate parked in the streets of Monaco, and France. DW geolocated a few of them. Oneof the photos for example, published on Reddit, was taken in the French city of Cannes, some 50 kilometers away from Monte Carlo, and the other one was taken in front of Hotel Le Royal Monceau-Raffles Paris in Paris.
In 2017, many social media users and local news outlets shared the pictures and speculated that the owner was a Saudi prince. A Morrocan websiteand aYemeni news outletnamed one of the men in the video as Khaled Ben Saud back in August 2017. But DW couldn't confirm the identity of the persons in the video.
Conclusion: The video in question does not show Maduro's son Maduro Guerra.
Edited by: Joscha Weber and Anne Thomas