Father-of-four and aspirant father-of-seven (click here), Portugal’s footballing superstar Cristiano Ronaldo appeared to have reaffirmed his commitment to helping children this week with the news that he was investing in a pediatric hospital in Chile.
The announcement, ostensibly coming from “Brafman Associates Law Firm – which looks after CR7’s various interests from New York” – said Ronaldo would be constructing the hospital with “his Italian business partner Alessandro Proto”.
More hospitals were to follow said the firm – all of them in South America. The first however was planned for Chile’s capital, Santiago do Chile and would be ready by 2020.
The news was repeated by multiple sources throughout the day but by the early evening it was being refuted outright by Gestifute, the company headed by millionaire Portuguese sports promoter Jorge Mendes and which is more commonly quoted as representing Ronaldo’s interests.
Gestifute told Spain’s EFE news agency that the news had been fabricated by none other than Alessandro Proto who, they said, has “publicised other lies about his supposed relationship with Ronaldo and other celebrities” in the past.
Bizarrely, EFE broke the erroneous news, and then broke the news that it was erroneous.
If any of the journalists who picked up the ‘non-story’ had done any digging, they would have smelt a rat as there are no references to CR7 and Proto having any kind of business relationship – quite the opposite in fact.
