A video circulating on social media, claiming to show the arrest of a director of a company called "RKA" in Côte d'Ivoire for building an airplane without a license, has been found to be false. The video shows a structure resembling an airplane and two men being escorted by a man in a military uniform. According to PesaCheck, the video is misleading and does not relate to an arrest in Côte d'Ivoire.
Investigations by PesaCheck revealed that the location mentioned in the video, Yopougon, does not have an airport. The main international airport in Abidjan, Félix-Houphouët-Boigny International Airport, is located in the Port-Bouët commune, not Yopougon. Furthermore, the structure shown in the video is not an airplane but a restaurant under construction in Grand-Bassam, a town east of Abidjan.
The structure in the video is actually a restaurant called "Aeria Food" built by Lavage International, a company based in Grand-Bassam. The company's website confirms its location on the "Route Internationale" in Grand-Bassam and describes the structure as a restaurant, not an airplane. Reverse image searches on Yandex also confirmed that the images in the video are of the restaurant.
The sequence in the video showing two men being arrested was also found to be unrelated to the arrest of an airplane manufacturer. A reverse image search on Yandex revealed a video on Facebook from September 2023 showing the same men being escorted by a man in a military uniform with a Malian flag patch. This suggests that the arrest took place in Mali, not Côte d'Ivoire.
Further investigations by PesaCheck found that the two men in the video were arrested by Malian security services in connection with a bank robbery investigation. Several media outlets, including Maliweb and L'Essor, reported on the arrest of three suspected Nigerian bank robbers. There is no evidence to suggest that the arrest was related to the construction of an airplane in Côte d'Ivoire.
PesaCheck also found that the code "RKA" mentioned in the video is actually the code for Air Afrique, a former pan-African airline based in Abidjan, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). This code is confirmed by two separate registers, but there is no connection to a company building an airplane or its director being arrested for lack of a license.
PesaCheck concluded that the video is false and part of a series of fact-checking exercises to identify potential misinformation on social media platforms. The organization aims to help the public distinguish between fact and fiction in public statements, particularly those related to public finances and sustainable development goals.
Key points
- The video does not show the arrest of an Ivorian man building an airplane without a license.
- The structure in the video is a restaurant under construction in Grand-Bassam, not an airplane.
- The arrest shown in the video took place in Mali, not Côte d'Ivoire.
