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It is false that Lula was named as a billionaire by Forbes magazine

Investigated Content: Image in which former President Lula appears on the cover of the American magazine Forbes, whose headline, translated from English, has the following sentence: “The world’s billionaires: the names, numbers and stories behind the 1,246 people who control the world”.

where it was published: Facebook and Twitter.

Completion of Proof: An image published by the website A Trombeta News in which former president Lula appears on the cover of Forbes magazine as one of the world’s billionaires is false. The image is actually a montage, and was never published by the American magazine.

The montage in question mixes elements from different real magazine covers and a old photograph of PT, published in 2014, by Agência Brasil, made by photographer José Cruz. On the occasion, Lula participated in the commemorative ceremony of the 10th anniversary of the Judiciary reform, in Brasília. The event had nothing to do with Forbes.

For Comprova, false is content invented or edited to change its original meaning and deliberately released to spread a falsehood.

Scope of publication: Comprova investigates the most far-reaching suspicious content on social networks. Until the morning of June 9, the text published on the website A Trombeta News generated more than 2,300 interactions on Facebook. Of that number, 305 were reactions and 248 were comments. On Twitter, the content link was shared 41 times, generating 129 interactions.

What the author of the publication says: On its Twitter account, A Trombeta News describes itself as “a right-wing media”. Comprova contacted those responsible for the site via a private message on Twitter. Despite not having answered all the questions sent by the report, the profile argued that the “news is linked on several sites”, and that it is possible to find the source of the text in the publication itself. However, the address of the website O Detetive, cited as a source at the bottom of the text, does not work.

How do we check: The first moment of verification involved reading the textual elements of the cover of the magazine, as well as the text that accompanies the publication of the website “A Trombeta News”. At this stage, it was possible to notice an error in the spelling of the former president’s name: “Luis” Inácio Lula da Silva, instead of “Luiz”.

To deepen the analysis of the cover’s veracity, Comprova carried out a reverse search of the image using the tools Google Images and Google Lens. As a result, no result was found that related the image to the Forbes magazine website.

Using the keywords “Lula” and “billionaire” on Google, the first search result was the article “Is Lula, Brazil’s Former President, A Billionaire?”, published in 2013 in Forbes. The material, which explains the methodology of the list of billionaires prepared annually by the magazine since 1987, also explains that, until that moment, Lula had never participated in the ranking, as he was not a billionaire. With the repercussion of this article in the Brazilian press, it was possible to notice that the rumors of Lula’s supposed fortune and the manipulated cover circulated, at least, since 2012 on the internet. Clarifications about the situation were published in vehicles such as The State of São Paulo and infomoney.

Finally, he contacted the website “A Trombeta News” to find out the source and the intention of the publication.

The truth of the cover

The analyzed content was never published by Forbes. In fact, the image is a montage published on the website A Trombeta News and mixes elements from different real Forbes covers with a old photo of Lulamade in 2014 by photographer José Cruz, from Agência Brasil.

The montage also bears a stamp from the 25th anniversary of Forbes magazine, celebrated in 2012, which appeared in some editions of the magazine that year. Still, the seal used in the fake image has different elements from the original.

The fake content features a sentence highlighting the 1,426 billionaires who would control the world. But this number of billionaires was only recorded in 2013. In 2012, the year of the commemorative stamp, there were 1,226 billionaires, according to Forbes.

Lula was never among the billionaires in the magazine’s ranking. This false information has been circulating on social networks since 2012. The following year, in 2013, the magazine itself published an article to disprove this claim. “While there are some billionaires who are politicians, Lula is not one of them,” declared Forbes.

Lula’s Heritage

According to the most recent declaration of assets by former President Lula to the Electoral Justice, made in August 2018, the PT had R$7.98 million in cars, real estate and financial assets. At the time, most of the value declared by Lula referred to a private pension plan, identified by the acronym VGBL (Vida Gerador de Benefício Livre).

According to Estadãoalso in 2018, the PT declared owning three plots of land, three apartments, two cars and a series of financial assets, such as deposits, investment in savings, credits arising from loans, sale and shares of his company of lectures and events.

why do we investigate: Comprova investigates suspicious content that goes viral on social media about the covid-19 pandemic, public policies of the federal government and presidential elections. The verified content conveys false information about Lula, who is a pre-candidate for the presidency of the Republic by the Workers’ Party. False or misleading content about political actors weakens the democratic process and voters’ decision, which must be based on true information.

Other checks on the topic: In addition to Comprova, the verification agencies Magnifying glass and to the facts already checked the fake cover of Forbes that puts Lula as a billionaire. Previously, Projeto Comprova showed that a post uses audio with an imitation of Lula to get confused about corruption allegations is that a popular poll did not officialize Jair Bolsonaro as Person of the Year in Time magazine.

Investigated by Nexo and Imirante.com. Verified by Plural Curitiba, BandNews FM, Metrópoles, A Gazeta, Folha de S. Paulo, O Estado de S. Paulo, O Dia.

Source: CNN Brasil

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