A network of Russian language news sites based in the Baltics is secretly owned by the Kremlin-owned holding that runs Sputnik, an investigation by Re:Baltica, a Latvian outlet, has found.

The investigation showed that Baltnews, a network of sites targeting the Russian speaking minority in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, was actually owned by Rossiya Segodnya, the holding company created in November 2014 to run a host of Kremlin-owned news outlets.

The investigation, by reporters Inga Spriņģe and Sanita Jemberga, said Rossiya Segodnya’s ownership was “obscured by a chain of owners, seemingly designed to make it appear as though Baltnews arose from local organizations.”

Re:Baltica found that the outlets’ websites are registered to a company called Media Capital Holding B.V., based in the small Dutch town of Hilversum. Re:Baltica found that that company, in turn, is owned by a Russian-registered company called Media-Kapital, which in turn is owned by the Russian newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti. That newspaper is itself owned by RIA-Novosti, a state-owned newswire that falls under the umbrella of Rossiya Segodnya.

Anatoly Ivanov, editor-in-chief of Baltnews in Lithuania, told the investigative outlet only that the news site was part of a bigger holding company registered in the Netherlands. The Estonia bureau chief, Aleskandr Kornilov, said the owners were a Dutch company called Kapital Media. Re:Baltica’s requests for comment to Rossiya Segodnya went unanswered.