A Facebook (FB) Reel is claiming that President Ferdinand Marcos has recovered a bank account in Belgium that supposedly contains billions of dollars. This is fake.
The Aug. 20 Reel bore this text:
“pilipinas mag handa na.. tayo na ang pinaka mayaman sa lahat. PBBM kinuha na ang marcos account sa beldium (sic) $987B
(Philippines, get ready… We’re now the richest country ever. President Marcos has got the Marcos account in Belgium [worth] $987 billion).”
The video provided no proof that the retrieval happened. There are neither any official documents or news reports about this so-called recovery.
The 90-second video with the fabricated claim showed two clips.
The first footage showed Marcos welcoming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on July 31 at the Malacañang Palace on her first official trip to the Philippines.
In their joint press statement following the event, neither Marcos nor von der Leyen mentioned a Belgian bank account supposedly carrying Marcos wealth.
The second clip was from a 2009 BBC News documentary that featured former first lady Imelda Marcos showing journalist Simon Reeve a treasury certificate – which she refused to show to the camera – that allegedly proved the Marcoses have this bank account in Belgium.
VERA Files Fact Check has previously found this claim to have no basis.
This fake claim emerged several days after state auditors noted that the Office of the President has spent over P403 million on foreign visits in Marcos’ first six months in office, which is P367 million higher than the previous administration’s travel expenses for the whole of 2021.
FB page ka ogak tv (created on April 25) published the short video with the fake claim, garnering over 1,700 reactions, 1,500 comments, 520 shares and 72,000 views.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
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