Clip of journalist berating Pakistan PM for overspending features doctored audio

As Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited Saudi Arabia in March, a doctored clip of a journalist purportedly criticising him for overspending during an economic crisis was shared online. However, the original footage shows the reporter asking the leader about his plans to combat corruption.

“On the one hand you beg for loans and on the other you make royal expenditures. An Arab anchorperson puts Shehbaz Sharif in his place,” reads Urdu-language text overlaid on a video posted on TikTok on March 22, where it has been shared more than 20,000 times.

Further text at the bottom of a collage of Sharif and a woman reads, “UAE news anchorperson takes Shehbaz Sharif to the cleaners. Breaking News”.

“Your government has asked for more loans from Saudi Arabia, and on the other hand we see your royal expenditures. A 30-member delegation has come to perform umrah on state expenses which is beyond comprehension,” the Arabic-speaking journalist appears to tell Sharif.

The same clip surfaced elsewhere on X, Facebook, Threads, Instagram and YouTube alongside similar claims.

Sharif visited Saudi Arabia from March 19 to 22, where he met with leaders for talks on trade partnerships and economic collaboration (archived link).

Though the Pakistani prime minister made a pilgrimage to Mecca during his visit, the clip is in fact from January 2023, and the journalist was asking about combating corruption in the South Asian country (archived link).

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the clip found it was taken from a longer video that the United Arab Emirates-based Al-Arabiya television published on YouTube on January 17, 2023 (archived link).

It is titled “Exclusive interview with Shehbaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan”.

Sharif visited the kingdom at the time to advance “economic, trade and investment ties”, according to a statement by Pakistan’s foreign ministry on January 10, 2023 (archived link).

The clip of the journalist asking a question corresponds to Al-Arabiya video’s 13:45 mark, where she asks the Pakistani leader, “Do you have a plan to combat rampant corruption in Pakistan?”

“I am the last man who would tolerate such things,” he responds.

The rest of the interview shows Sharif discussing Pakistan’s historic relations with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which he believed would help his country become self-reliant and prosperous.

At no point does the journalist ask him about his delegation or performing a holy pilgrimage. There are also no credible reports about Sharif being asked about those issues.

AFP analysed the segment using the voice cloning detection tool by Hiya in The Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, which found the audio in the circulating video clip is “very likely AI-generated” (archived link).