Ronaldo did not donate 1.5 million euros to the children of Palestine

Dozens of news websites around the world have published an article saying that Cristiano Ronaldo has donated 1.5 million euros (or dollars) to Palestinian children. The article was first published on an anonymous website run by administrators from Kosovo, but it became viral after a Macedonian website 9sport, published it in English. As for the B/C/S languages, it was first published on the website SportSport.

The article saying that the famous football player Cristiano Ronaldo has donated 1.5 million euros “to orphans in the Gaza Strip”, was first published in B/C/S languages by a website SportSport.ba.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s grand gesture for the children of Palestine
According to numerous media reports, Ronaldo has donated 1.5 million euros to orphans in the Gaza Strip, a place where the hungry Palestinian children are growing up in very difficult conditions.
Food shortages are a daily problem in this area, so Ronaldo has at least somewhat helped the powerless Palestinians.

As a source for this information, the author of the article on SportSport only mentions “numerous media”, without specifying which one. The article is accompanied by a post from Onwadan’s charity foundation Twitter profile, which was published the same day. The first thing we can see here is that the Twitter post states that 1.5 million US dollars have been donated, while the amount on the website SportSport is in euros.

Within an hour, the article from SportSport was shared by Dnevni avaz and Radio Sarajevo. Throughout the following days, over 35 news websites shared the same article in B/C/S languages, without referring to any source other than the Twitter post.

On May 19, the fact-checking website Lead Stories published an analysis and rated the article as fake. 

The article first went viral after it was published in English by an anonymous website 9sportpro.com. This website publishes news in English, but its Facebook page states that all five of page administrators are from Macedonia. As the source of information for the news in English, this website cited infoshqipmedia, a website in the Albanian language, but based in Macedonia, which states:

Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo is known as one of the most humane people in the world.
He often gives large sums of money to help those in need, but one of the countries he has helped the most is Palestine.
Some foreign media outlets speculate that Ronaldo has decided to donate 1.5 million euros to Palestinians.

Again, the article does not specify which foreign media are “speculating” that Ronaldo donated the money. According to an analysis by Lead Stories, at the time there were two websites which had published the same article – Albanienshow and Fact Factor.

The anonymous website Albanienshow is the actual source of this article since it was the first who published it on May 14 at 3:55 pm. According to the website’s Facebook page, all seven of its administrators are based in Kosovo.

The post on the Twitter profile of Onwadan’s charity foundation, which states that Ronaldo donated 1.5 million dollars, laid the basis for all of these articles to be written. All the other articles that existed up to that point said that he donated 1.5 million euros. Lead Stories’ analysis further states that Ronaldo’s agency confirmed that the story was fake:

Many people seem to believe that this Twitter account belongs to the actual charity that received the money. However, there are other posts on that Twitter account that indicate that the Onwadan Foundation was founded in Nigeria and not in Palestine.
There have also been plenty of posts about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. So we decided to reach out to this Twitter profile and ask them if they really were indeed the charity that received the money, and if not, what were their news sources. We didn’t get a response, but we later got blocked by this profile on Twitter.
Apparently, a tweet from the Nigerian charity was enough for the Venezuelan television network Telesur to publish a report about the donation. That was also enough for Russia Today to report that there were “reports” on the donation.
What none of these websites did along the way was to contact Ronaldo’s management agency Gestifute. But we did, and they confirmed that sources close to the player could guarantee that the story was false, “like many other stories about Ronaldo”.

Considering all the facts presented in this analysis, we rate SportSport’s article as fake news. The websites which shared the article are rated for the distribution of fake news.

Meanwhile, the website Radio Sarajevo has published a new article titled “Ronaldo and the stories of donations to Palestine – what is the real truth”. The article stated that the news was false, and also featuring an apology to their readers. The article was also shared by the website Ekskluziva.

For several years now, this information has been appearing on the internet repeatedly, mostly triggered by some anonymous person on Twitter, and many media outlets are catching on to it. Unfortunately, this happened to us and our “second shift”, who “fell for that” and published it.
However, just like in the past, the information is false, and on this occasion, we apologize to our readers for this omission.

Since they published a new article and acknowledged their mistake, the original article on the websites Radio Sarajevo and Ekskluziva are rated as corrected.

Raskrinkavanje sent a query to all the websites who shared the original article containing false information. We received replies from websites Mostarski, Zenit and Haber, all of whom published new articles and therefore we rate them as corrected.

(Raskrinkavanje.ba)

Analyzed based on the suggestion:

Gift for Ramadan: Ronaldo donates 1.5 million euros to Palestinian children

Humanitarianism/ Gift for Ramadan: Ronaldo donates 1.5m euros to Palestinian children

Cristiano Ronaldo’s grand gesture for the children of Palestine