False claim Titan passenger was the vice chairman of the World Economic Forum | Fact check

Isabella Fertel, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Passenger aboard Titan submersible was the vice chairman of the World Economic Forum

A June 22 Facebook post (direct link, archived link) features a video of a man making claims about passengers aboard a submersible that imploded while heading for the Titanic shipwreck site.

“What is the coincidence that the father and the son that are trapped on this contraption right here, in this tin can, are part of an organization that us Americans and Canadians all despise?” says the person in the video, which was posted before the U.S. Coast Guard announced it had recovered wreckage indicating the sub had imploded.

The video then shows what appears to be a biography of a British Pakistani man named Shahzada Dawood on the World Economic Forum website.

“He is part of the World Economic Forum," says the man in the video. "He’s also the vice chairman of World Economic Forum.”

One version of the post shared on Facebook garnered more than 3,000 likes in one day before it was deleted. Other iterations of the claim have been shared on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.

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Our rating: False

Dawood, one of the passengers who died aboard the Titan, was the vice chairman of Engro Corporation, a Pakistani holding company partnered with the WEF. He was not the vice chairman of the WEF or a member of the organization’s leadership.

Titan submersible passenger not member of WEF leadership

A submersible vessel carrying five people lost contact with its support ship less than two hours after embarking on a descent to the Titanic wreck site on June 18.

Rescuers searching for the vessel and its passengers have since found debris near the bow of the Titanic wreck site indicating the submersible imploded due to a “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” USA TODAY previously reported. All five passengers aboard the vessel are believed to be dead.

One of the passengers was Dawood, who boarded the submersible with his son, Suleman Dawood, and was one of the richest men in Pakistan.

But contrary to the post's claim, Shahzada Dawood was not the chairman of the WEF.

Yann Zopf, head of media for the World Economic Forum, told USA TODAY that Shahzada Dawood was neither the vice chairman nor an employee of the organization. He is also not listed on the WEF's leadership webpage.

Rather, the elder Dawood was the vice chairman of the Engro Corporation, a Pakistani conglomerate initially founded as a fertilizer company, according to his bios on the Engro Corporation and WEF websites.

The Engro Corporation is an official partner of the WEF, and the Pakistani businessman attended some of the organization's events as a member of the Family Business Community, Zopf said in an email.

Fact check: Nothing found so far in search for Titanic-bound submarine, contrary to viral claim

USA TODAY reached out to the Instagram user who shared the post and representatives for Engro Corporation for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

The Associated Press, AFP and PolitiFact also debunked this claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, Titan passenger was not vice chair of the WEF | Fact check