The division of the British BBC network dealing with the fight against disinformation (BBC Monitoring) discovered a company that has declared its headquarters in Britain, which broadcasts it disinformation of the Russian state to an audience of millions in the Arab world.

Yala News assures that the news it broadcasts is objective and unbiased, but the analysis done by the BBC shows that its content is a copy of news from websites related to the Russian state and that the company in question is active in Syria.

Yala Group, the parent company of Yala News, has a strong social media presence. On Facebook it has about 20 pages, all brightly designed and in a professional manner. Every two hours they present attractive videos on topics that may interest them three million Arabic-speaking subscribers them: celebrity interviews, comedy sketches, some world politics stuff.

The reviews on the pages of Yala News speak of impartiality and independence. But if you look more closely, it’s easy to see that the articles on the company’s pages are clearly pro-Russian. And many are almost identical to those in the Russian state press, published on the same day, the BBC reports.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Yala News posts started to become popular.

For example, on March 10, 2022, a ridiculous and completely false story appeared on Russian state television that the US supposedly intended to use birds as biological weapons and spread diseases to Russia through them.

On the same day, the piece was translated and published by the Arabic services of Russian publications Sputnik and RT. Two hours later, it appeared in video form on the Yala News Facebook page.

This is just one of many examples. BBC journalists along with disinformation experts tracked Yala News’ most popular videos for a year and found that almost all of them came “from” Kremlin-controlled or pro-Kremlin websites.

These included, for example, “fake news” that the mass killing of Buka residents was staged, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was drunk during a videotaped address to the nation, and that Ukrainian soldiers were deserting the front. All this was reproduced on the Yala News page within hours of their appearance in Russian state publications.

Belen Carrasco Rodriguez of the UK’s Center for Information Sustainability, who studies Russian intelligence operations, believes Yala News is the Kremlin’s mouthpiece in the Middle East.

The content of the posts and the timing of their appearance suggest that Yala News is one of Moscow’s “information laundries”: it publishes second- or third-hand propaganda to create the illusion that it does not come from the Kremlin. Russia has been doing this for some time.

“Yala is popular with the Arab public, and sources connected to the Kremlin can use this to their advantage,” Rodriguez says.

Ruri Thornton of cyber security firm Protection Group International says this phenomenon, “information laundering”, has been on the rise lately – in response to more and more people finding out what Russian state media stands for.

“The idea here is to ‘wash out’ the narratives, changing them slightly, and thus integrating them into the mainstream. By hiring a digital marketing company to produce content for their website, for example, they make the information seem completely unrelated to Russia and can easily be pushed out into the real world,” says Thornton.

The Yala Group is registered in the UK, in central London, at an address shared with over 65,000 other businesses. 12,000 of them are active.

The Yala Group has no actual office or staff there.

We suspect – the BBC writes – that Yala’s base is in Syria, under the protection of Moscow’s long-term ally, Bashar al-Assad.

Our knowledge of Syria and geolocation techniques allowed us to determine that the Facebook photos of Yala’s employees and office were taken in one of the suburbs of Damascus. In fact, most employees’ profiles say they are based in Damascus, and one former employee confirmed this.

Yala’s clients include well-known Syrian figures and well-known journalists who support the Assad regime. Another Yala client is the pro-Assad radio station Sham FM. It broadcasts Sputnik’s programs in Arabic.

Experts speculate that Yala was registered in Britain to avoid looking like a company from a sanctioned country. This allows him to establish relationships with companies such as Meta, which owns Facebook (its activities have been labeled extremist and banned in Russia).

The editors of one of Yala Group’s Facebook pages recently wrote that the company had become Meta’s official business partner in social media marketing.

Meta itself, however, denied it had accepted the Yala Group as a “business partner”, the company’s press office said in response to a BBC query.

Who is behind Yala News?

We found – writes the BBC investigative team – the director of Yala, ‘Ahmad Mohamn. He is a Syrian businessman living in Dubai.

“The Yala Group is a UK-based company,” he told the BBC. – “We have more than 500 clients, including public figures, artists and new talents. We don’t have employees in London yet, but we might in the near future.”

Asked about the pro-Kremlin videos on the Yala News page, Mohamn replied: “The content of Yala News is not biased. Syria, Russia or any other country – we adhere to impartiality.”

When asked if the company he owns received money from the Russian or Syrian authorities, he replied: “I am the only source of funding and the founder of Yala and no one can influence me.”

The BBC has requested details of Yala’s registration with the UK’s national private company register, Companies House. The press office responded that it does not comment on specific businesses and that it does not have the authority to verify the information submitted during registration.

A Meta representative recalled that the company combats misinformation on its platforms by hiring independent fact-checkers – who verify the accuracy of information.

The BBC asked Russian and Syrian authorities for comment on their relationship with Yala News but did not receive a response.