A British company is spreading Russia's fake news in the Arab world

 

A British company is spreading Russia's fake news in the Arab world

The BBC's misinformation unit has discovered that a firm incorporated in the United Kingdom is delivering Russian official disinformation to tens of millions of Arabic-speaking people.

Yala News claims to present impartial news, but a BBC analysis found that much of its content directly reflects stories from Russian government-backed media sites - and that it is actually Syrian. Works from

Yala News, a branch of the Yala Group, has a significant presence on social networking sites and has 20 or more well-developed Facebook pages.

Every two hours expertly produced videos are uploaded to these Facebook pages focusing on stories that are likely to interest their 3 million Arabic-speaking followers. They publish celebrity interviews, comic sketches, and content on world politics.

Reviews of Yala News describe it as neutral, but a closer look reveals that it publishes stories with a certain pro-Russian angle, many of which are similar to stories in Russian state media.

This is an example. On March 10, a false and bizarre news report appeared on the Russian state TV channel that the United States was using birds as bio-weapons to spread deadly diseases in Russia.

The news was translated and published the same evening on the Russian government-backed networks Sputnik Arabic and Russia Today (RT) Arabic. It was posted as a video on the Yala News Facebook page two hours later.

The biological bird narrative is only one example. Over the course of a year, the BBC worked with disinformation experts to monitor Yala News' most-viewed videos and discovered that all of them were sourced from Russian media.

These include fake stories claiming that a child massacre was planned, that President Zelensky was 'drunk' in a video giving an address, and that Ukrainian soldiers are fleeing the front line. It all started in Russian state media, with videos of the same story appearing hours later on Yala News.

Information Laundering

Belgian Carrasco-Rodriguez, who researches Russian influence operations for the Center for Information Resilience in the UK, says Yala News is acting as a 'Kremlin loudspeaker' in the Middle East.

She says the time frame and similarities in their stories suggest that Yala may be "money laundering information" for Russia: spreading propaganda through a third party so it doesn't appear to be from the Kremlin. This is something Russia has been known to do in the past.

"Because Yala is popular with Arab audiences, Kremlin-connected sources are using it to promote their interests," she claims.

Roarig Thornton of cyber security firm Protection Group International says information money laundering is becoming increasingly common as people become more aware of Russian state-sponsored media.

He stated, "The goal is to mainstream non-authentic narratives." By engaging a digital marketing firm to create this type of content for them, the information looks to be completely divorced from Russia and can subsequently be organically conveyed to the actual world.

Fake Reeves

Yala News is part of the Yala Group, which introduces itself as "a company engaged in the field of visual content on social networking sites", but its operation on social sites is not very good.

Yala Group's website mainly consists of fake text and outdated images. Most of its five-star reviews on Facebook appear to be fake, written by accounts from Southeast Asia, where Facebook reviews are known as a business.

Two reviews described Yala News as an "unbiased, amazing, honest, transparent and objective news platform".

"It smacks of coordinated behavior," says Mustafa Iyad of the Institute of Strategic Dialogue. He feels that the fact that Yala News broadcasts so many films in the same format every day could cost it tens of thousands of dollars.

Yala Group is registered in the United Kingdom at its Bloomsbury London location, which is shared with 65,000 other companies, 12,000 of which are operational. However, the corporation has no employees or offices in the area.

We suspected that Yala News was operating from the civil war-torn country of Syria. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a longtime ally of Russia. Russia has supplied arms to pro-Assad forces during the 12-year civil war.

Using spatial information and geolocation techniques, we obtained Facebook images depicting the team and its offices in a suburb of Damascus. Most of his social profiles say he lives in the Syrian capital. A former employee has confirmed this.

Yala Group's clients include pro-government Syrian celebrities and journalists. The photo shows state TV reporter Shadi Halvi, a client of the Yala Group, posing with embargoed Syrian businessmen, the Katarji brothers. Mr. Halvi owns a radio station financed by the Kattarjis.

Another Yala client is Sham FM, a pro-government radio station that broadcasts programs produced by Sputnik Arabic, part of Russia's state radio network.

Syrian media experts at BBC Monitoring say pro-government and private media outlets are often owned by businessmen with close ties to the political and military establishment.

Experts believe that the UK registration is intended to prevent Yala from operating from a country that has sanctioned it. The registration in London will help them establish business relationships with platforms such as Facebook's parent company Meta.

Indeed, the proprietor of one of Yala Group's Facebook pages recently commented about becoming an official metal business partner,' indicating that its social media marketing services are encouraged. Meta denied it when we contacted them.

Who is behind Yala News?

We tracked down Yala CEO Ahmad Momina, a Syrian businessman living in Dubai.

He told the BBC that 'Yala Group is a British company. "We have over 500 clients, including public figures, artists, and performers."  We don't have employees in London yet, but we may in the near future.

We asked him about pro-Kremlin videos on Yala News. He said that the content of Yala News is not biased. Whether it's Syria or Russia or something else, we respect neutrality.

Then, we asked if their business received funding from the Russian or Syrian governments.

"I am the sole owner and investor in Yala, and no one can sway me," he explained.

We inquired about Yala Group's UK registration with Companies House. According to a spokesman, they "do not comment on individual companies" and "have no legal authority to verify or endorse the information provided."

A spokesperson for Meta, the company that owns Facebook, says it works closely with third-party fact-checkers to prevent the spread of misinformation on its platforms.

We also contacted the governments of Russia and Syria and asked if they had any ties to Yala News, but our questions went unanswered.