In the Russian segment of social media, users are spreading a claim that Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s company, Film Heritage Inc., allegedly purchased the Palace des Neiges hotel in Courchevel for €88 million. According to the propagandists, the hotel at the exclusive ski resort is now supposedly being prepared for renovation and reopening for the 2026-2027 winter season. As proof, they assert that information about the new owner has already been published on the hotel's website. This material was allegedly distributed by the French outlet Les Echos de la France.

However, Les Echos de la France is not a legitimate French media outlet but a “one-time” website created by malicious actors specifically to spread this narrative. Using the whois.com tool, which provides domain and IP address information, it was revealed that this domain was registered in late November 2024 on a Lithuanian server hosted by Hostinger.

This server has previously been identified in international fact-checking investigations, as Russian propaganda has used it multiple times to create fake websites for spreading disinformation.

The fake site, which was created just days earlier (on November 22), indeed claims that Film Heritage Inc. is the hotel's owner. However, no such mention appears on the legitimate hotel website. Neither any reputable Western media nor Monte-Carlo SBM - the business group that actually owns this property - reported any sales involving companies associated with Volodymyr Zelenskyi.

These so-called investigations into the property ownership of Ukrainian officials have become part of a systematic campaign to discredit them. This way, propagandists and Moscow-aligned entities aim to depict Ukraine as rife with corruption — which could further harm Ukraine’s European integration path, as combating and reducing corruption is one of the key requirements for Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.

Other similar fabricated cases which related to the acquisition of real estate with stolen funds include Zelenskyi allegedly purchasing a villa once owned by Hitler’s propaganda minister Goebbels for €8 million, and Zelenskyi’s mother-in-law supposedly acquiring a villa on the coast of Egypt using Western humanitarian aid intended for Ukraine.