LETA is the main
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
n
news agency
A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency may ...
. Its headquarters are in
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...
. It is owned by Estonian entrepreneur
Margus Linnamäe Margus may refer to:
*Margus (name), Estonian given name
*Margus (city), a former Roman city at the locality of modern Požarevac, Serbia
*Margus River, the Roman name of Great Morava, see Battle of the Margus
{{disambig ...
through his company
Postimees Group
AS Postimees Grupp (also known in English as Postimees Group), formerly known as AS Postimees and AS Eesti Meedia, is an Estonian media holding company headquartered in Tallinn. The company is currently owned by MM Group (an investment company ...
.
History
It was founded as ''Latopress'' in 1919, soon after Latvia became independent; the name was changed to ''LTA'' the next year when the wire service was subordinated to the Latvian Telegraph Agency. The name ''LETA'' was only used occasionally during the interwar perio
In 1940, when Latvia was
Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, occupied by the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, it became a subordinate agency of the
Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), a status it would keep until Latvia regained independence in 1991.
During the
occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany
The military occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany was completed on July 10, 1941 by Germany's armed forces. Initially, the territory of Latvia was under the military administration of Army Group North, but on 25 July 1941, Latvia was in ...
, LETA was subordinated to the German DNB news agency.
From 1971 it was known as ''Latinform''. On 31 May 1990, the Latvian government restored the name LETA and the news agency's independence from TASS.
In 1997, LETA was put up for privatisation by the Latvian state.
On 27 April 2011, the LETA website was defaced by an unknown hacker who claimed to be protesting commercially biased news sources. It was down for a few hours as was the LETA side project "nozare.lv" and others.
In 2015, Estonian entrepreneur
Margus Linnamäe Margus may refer to:
*Margus (name), Estonian given name
*Margus (city), a former Roman city at the locality of modern Požarevac, Serbia
*Margus River, the Roman name of Great Morava, see Battle of the Margus
{{disambig ...
's UP Invest acquired LETA, and placed it under media company Eesti Meedia (now known as
Postimees Group
AS Postimees Grupp (also known in English as Postimees Group), formerly known as AS Postimees and AS Eesti Meedia, is an Estonian media holding company headquartered in Tallinn. The company is currently owned by MM Group (an investment company ...
). The acquisition plan was first announced in August 2015.
Eesti Meedia already owned rival news agency
Baltic News Service
The Baltic News Service (BNS) is the largest news agency operating in the Baltic states. Founded in April, 1990, by a group of students (the founding CEO was Allan Martinson), it sought to inform foreign correspondents in Moscow of development ...
(BNS), but the Linnamäe-owned media company sold BNS operations in Latvia (subsequently renamed Latvian News Service) and media monitoring service Mediju Monitorings to a third-party Estonian company named AMP Investeeringud on 31 August 2015.
UP Invest has set up a subsidiary named Latvia Newsworks, which has been the owner of 99.66% stake in LETA since October 2015.
The
Competition Council of Latvia made a decision on 23 December 2015 that the deal would not impact competition, and approved the acquisition on 5 January 2016.
Later, it was discovered that most employees of the Latvian News Service and Mediju Monitorings were transferred to LETA, but was not disclosed to the Latvian authorities at the time of the acquisition.
On 18 January 2019, the Competition Council imposed a €32,200 fine on
MM Group (UP Invest's parent company).
References
External links
*
History of LETA
News agencies based in Latvia
1919 establishments in Latvia
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