FAKE NEWS: Were stacks of burnt embezzled money found at Agha Siraj Durrani's house?

By
Web Desk
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A video showing a room filled with stacks of foreign currency notes—some of them burnt—has gone viral on social media with users claiming that anti-corruption officials discovered the cash at the house of PPP leader Agha Siraj Durrani.

A background check by Geo.tv shows that the video has no link to the Sindh Assembly Speaker or his residence. In fact, neither does the footage originate from Pakistan nor are any of the foreign currency notes in the video real.

The video has been circulating on social media during the past few days with a caption claiming that National Accountability Bureau (NAB) officials discovered the cash at Durrani’s residence in Karachi, and that the politician's wife attempted to burn the cash when the anti-corruption officials arrived to raid the house.

"Hidden local and foreign currency notes are seen stacked in basement of the house of Agha Siraj Durrani, Speaker of #Sindh Assembly in DHA #Karachi. His wife is said to have tried to set fire when NAB officials arrived to raid house and family refused to open doors," read the misleading caption under the video posted by Twitter user 'Pakistan Zindabad' (@securepakistan) on March 10.

That post alone has been retweeted at least 2,000 times with more than 2,500 unsuspecting users liking the tweet.

It turns out that all of the captions linking the video to the PPP leader are false.

The video originating from last year actually shows an art installation from Madrid, Spain created by Spanish artist Alejandro Monge. 

The video was filmed by a visitor who saw Monge's installation entitled "European Dream" at the Art Madrid festival in February 2018. 

The artist posted this video on his own Instagram account.

This is not the first time that the same video has been used on social media with a misleading caption to falsely link it to politicians and accuse them of corruption.

The video has previously been used on social media to spread false claims in Russia and Haiti, and even last week was used on Facebook to accuse Cameroon's minister of defence and his wife of corruption.