The mystery of who owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal deepened Wednesday when a magazine identified casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as the buyer of Nevada’s largest newspaper, hours after Adelson denied any ownership stake in the paper.

The confusion reached even the newspaper’s leadership, where Editor Mike Hengel said in an email to the Los Angeles Times that “no one has confirmed (Adelson’s ownership) to us.”

News (plus) Media Capital Group, a Delaware-based corporation founded in September, purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal and its sister publications on Dec. 11 for $140 million.

The sale raised eyebrows for its price — far more than the $102 million paid in March for the Review-Journal and seven other daily newspapers — and because the owner of News (plus) Media Capital Group refused to be identified.

Fortune magazine said in an article published Wednesday that Adelson was behind the paper’s purchase, citing multiple sources. “Mystery solved, but we still don’t understand why it was a big secret in the first place.”

But Adelson told Brian Stetler of CNN on Tuesday night that he had “no personal interest” in the newspaper.

Democratic politicians said they weren’t worried about a change in ownership at the R-J, as it’s known. The paper’s conservative bent, they said, made it a logical purchase by a rich Vegas conservative. “I don’t know who bought the newspaper for sure, but I guarantee the editorial policy couldn’t be any worse than it has been for 10 years,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., joked to reporters on Wednesday.

Rep. Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat who represents the Las Vegas region in Congress, said she has tried to determine who the new owner is but will not believe anything until she hears directly from the source.

“I don’t think the community can accept the information in the R-J as credible if they don’t know who’s behind it, regardless of who that might be,” Titus said. “Whoever it is needs to come out and say, ‘I own the paper.’ And if it’s not Mr. Adelson, he ought to come out and say, ‘I don’t own the paper.’ ”

The newspaper’s editorial board said the paper has little ground to criticize other organizations for failing to be transparent with the public.

“Does the Review-Journal have the credibility to advocate for such openness?” the editorial board wrote Wednesday. “Not so much anymore.”