Reports that emerged few days ago about PSG player and star of the Moroccan national team Achraf Hakimi acquiring all his properties in his mother’s name, has been tagged as ‘fake and misleading’ by an investigative journalist Rym Bousmid.
Few days ago, a ‘misleading’ tweet went viral and taken up by several ‘serious’ media, according to the outlet.
It was reported that Hiba Abouk, the ex-wife of Achraf Hakimi and Spanish actress, tried to secure more than half of his fortune in court amid their divorce proceeding. But the 24-year-old footballer had acquired his properties ‘under the name of his mother’.
The move would have prevented Abouk, portrayed over social media as a venal woman, from “hitting the jackpot”.
Hakimi’s fans had rejoiced and had taken to various social media platforms to praise him.
However, The Africa Report stated that “it’s all fake”.
Bousmid dug into the rumour and how it started before concluding that it had no element of truth.
“It started with a tweet published by the Ivorian journal First Mag. This online media platform is a regular offender when it comes to the dissemination of fake news, and seems to focus more on comedy than journalism,” Rym writes for The Africa Report.
The story, however, is not based on reality. It perfectly illustrates the results of an MIT study published in 2018, which found that fake news spreads faster than real information.
To date, the message in question has been retweeted more than 15,000 times and liked nearly 97,000 times. The republication of the information by large accounts like the American outlet @DailyLoud has propelled the false information.
French Journalist and sports reporter Gilles Verdez also spoke out against the rumors, stressing that they are “fake news” and it wouldn’t be possible for Hakimi to put the property in his mother’s name.
In a report from French media Le 10 Sport, Verdez said that the rumours “are not true.”
Also, Hakimi’s mother has refuted the story but this has not stopped the initial report from being circulated and debated. Many opined that she refuted it to protect her son.
From a legal standpoint, the news is “not credible” because “hiding one’s asset from one’s spouse is an act of fraud”.
“In the majority of European countries (including Spain, Germany, Italy and France, where the player has lived successively), there are two types of matrimonial regimes: marriage in community of property, which implies that everything acquired during the marriage by one of the spouses is shared in case of divorce; and that of the separation of property, which assumes that the non-division of property is stipulated in the marriage contract,” as per The African Report.
“In summary, either the fortune of the player, considered the sixth-best-paid African footballer in Europe in 2022, will be shared following the divorce with the mother of his children, or the latter already knows that she will not benefit. Hiding one’s assets from one’s spouse is considered an act of fraud.”
According to Omar El Adlouni, a professor at French university La Sorbonne, the allegations are impossible from a legal point of view, in addition to being “fake news.”
In a LinkedIn post, El Adlouni denounced the rumours, explaining that under current laws regulating marriages in Europe, spouses cannot transfer wealth to escape splitting assets in case of a divorce as that is considered a criminal act punishable by law.
As for what Abouk, who was in a relationship with Hakimi for five years, including three years of marriage, has to say following their breakup, the Spanish actress made it clear she is on the side of her estranged husband’s alleged victims.
