Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis spoke with ARD presenter Günther Jauch and addressed a number of issues concerning the “Greek issue”. Even more interesting was a segment on the news program where a video was aired apparently showing Varoufakis sticking his middle finger to hypothetical German officials.

The address was given in Zagreb in 2013, two years before he became Greece’s “econ czar”.

He vehemently denied the allegation and called the video a fake.

A day later the ever-present Bild tabloid refuted Varoufakis’ claim, stating that experts agree that the “rude raised” middle finger gesture was not the product of montage.

Social media site Conflict Reporter, which has often exposed videos from the Ukraine and Syria as fake, said the Varoufakis’ images showed no signs of photo editing. The site looked at shadows, movement, relativity and found that there were no signs that the video had been tampered with.

Film expert Kostas Nomikos expressed his certainty that the video is authentic, as both the image and sound match, and it has not been cut.

Bild reports that if the video has not been edited then Varoufakis has been exposed as a … liar in front of an audience of millions.

Varoufakis told Jauch that he felt ashamed that people should believe that he is capable of making such a gesture. “It is a fake video just as another that shows me giving my hand to a foreign politician and then pulling it back at the last moment,” he stressed. Jauch assured Varoufakis that he would look into the authenticity of the video.

Here’s the video in question:
See the gesture at 1:59 minutes.