The narrative surrounding the investigative platforms Bellingcat and OCCRP had already been crumbling for a while, particularly regarding the actual independence of the two groups and the crudeness of their investigations, which strangely never targeted anyone other than… Russia. The two platforms, founded in 2007 and 2014, indeed claimed to practice “investigative journalism,” but never published any investigation into the European Union, corruption in Europe, high-ranking officials, or corrupt politicians in the various countries of the continent… Not the smallest investigation into power networks… nothing, a complete void, only and always: Russia. But recently, a genuine investigative journalist, an American named Lucy Komisar, released a massive dossier on the two groups… In reality, they are one and the same, with a ghost address in the Netherlands. She revealed everything, including fake investigations, the creation of fake news picked up by the Western press, and fabricated dossiers, like those on flight MH17, Navalny, the Skripals, and many others… She concluded: “It’s a propaganda operation by the American and British secret services.” This is the “Komisar Scoop,” which was widely commented on across the Atlantic… but blocked by the French press, because it also revealed that the French state had been funding OCCRP, at least since 2014…
The Man Behind the Panama Papers. Drew Sullivan, does that ring a bell? An American citizen, with a British mother, the man is known for founding OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project). At the start of his life, he had a brilliant education in aerospace engineering at the University of Texas, his home state. He was recruited by NASA, working on structural dynamics for the Rockwell Space Systems space shuttle project. His path suddenly diverged with the start of an acting career, only to reappear as an “investigative journalist” for the Associated Press or The Tennessean newspaper. He then settled in Bosnia-Herzegovina (2004), where he quickly made a name for himself as a “great” investigative journalist, founding a first center, CIN (Center for Investigative Journalism). Three years later, in 2007, he founded OCCRP with Paul Radu, embarking on very high-level investigative work and releasing huge cases and masses of documents. It was his organization that released the Panama Papers, soon earning him a prestigious Pulitzer Prize (2017). Such information could only be provided with the help of secret services and well-placed individuals, high-ranking officials, or prominent figures. Consequently, suspicions that he was being used by one or more Western agencies had been current for a long time. Fearing so-called SLAPP lawsuits, Sullivan also founded “Reporters Shield,” an association providing legal resources, lawyers, and attorneys to media outlets or NGOs.
The Bellingcat Network. In parallel and around the same years, a Briton, Eliot Higgins, founded the international investigative journalism collective Bellingcat (2014). The structure set up in the Netherlands and became famous for releasing numerous “scoops.” Claiming independence, it soon recruited a team of over 40 people—a considerable organization—and launched a crowdsourced “snitch” platform, involving tens of thousands of volunteers to gather information via the Discord platform. What was immediately very suspicious about Bellingcat’s actions was its first “mission.” The group pulled out of a hat its version of the destruction of flight MH17 over Donbas in the summer of 2014. While many leads pointed to a Ukrainian fighter jet, Bellingcat labored to “prove” that the plane was shot down by a Russian BUK anti-aircraft system. Official “investigations” were slow to start, and it was only after 2022… that it was asserted and “confirmed” that this version was the sole truth… effectively sweeping aside the latter. The group then focused almost exclusively on Russia, releasing the Skripal case (2018), a murky Novichok poisoning affair, followed by the alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny (2020). The setup was a crude fake, but it spread throughout the Western press, despite all counter-investigations, to become “THE official version.” But such actions attracted suspicion, first regarding the group’s finances… It was soon proven that Bellingcat was funded by NED, an American funding body linked to the CIA… but also by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, among other dubious funding sources. Put in difficulty, the group claimed its information came from “open sources and leaks or the corrupt purchase of crucial information.” The myth of Bellingcat’s independence collapsed very quickly, first due to its funding sources, then due to the nature of the group’s work, which was no longer journalism but the job of intelligence services. In reality, it was a front for MI6… This explains, for many, the famous information, the informants… and the fabrication of fakes in the psychological and cognitive warfare waged globally against Russia.
Western Media Question. Recently, in an article dated August 30, 2025, Anti-Spiegel questioned the two platforms and the damage they cause to the Western audience. In both cases, the groups were relocated to third countries, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Netherlands. In both cases, the two structures fostered belief in their “independence.” Relocating the groups, moving them from the USA and the UK, primarily allowed them to assert, or deflect suspicion of, their direct ties to the secret services of those two countries. In both cases, Europe was chosen as the field of action. Although claiming to be “international investigative” groups, the two structures never attacked any European institutions on home turf, let alone any European government. Nothing on the European Union, not the smallest scandal that could implicate politicians and high-ranking officials in Europe. Finally, both structures were founded in the early 2000s and 2010s, and both ultimately engaged only in a full-scale assault against Russia and Russia alone. In the Netherlands, where Bellingcat has its headquarters and a shell company, genuine investigative journalists discovered it was just a “mailbox”… there were no premises or offices. For The Realist Review, an American journalist found the group’s supposed address. She found the door closed at a company’s head office and was told “that no other company had offices in the building.” This address, 449a Herengracht in Amsterdam, was also that… of OCCRP. According to her investigation, the building in question belonged to Amsterdam Office Space, a company providing telephone services and mail forwarding. Thus began a new investigation.
OCCRP and Bellingcat… the Same Address. The affair was revealed by American investigative journalist Lucy Komisar (1942-), famous for her independent work, in what is now called “The Komisar Scoop.” Continuing the investigation, the journalist discovered that Bellingcat was registered with the Chamber of Commerce under a fake activity and a fake name. The company was supposed to be: “a company specializing in film production and research and development in social sciences and humanities.” She produced numerous documents, particularly on money transfers via OCCRP, which were then secretly dispatched to bought journalists, or to NGOs involved in infiltration and psychological warfare, presented as independent, for the “defense of the press” or “democracy.” The conclusion of her work was unequivocal: “OCCRP and Bellingcat are not independent media, but Western propaganda operations funded by the American and British governments to promote specific and completely fabricated narratives.” She had previously demonstrated in various investigations corruption facts within large American multinationals and dismantled the version presented in the Navalny film, which repeated the poisoning fake and other crude fabrications, publishing her articles in prestigious newspapers like The Wall Street Journal.
USAID, NED, and the American and British Secret Services. In November 2021, Samantha Power, then director of the famous USAID, dared to publicly declare that OCCRP “was a partner of USAID.” Since then, as everyone knows, this NSA and CIA agency was dismantled by President Trump (January 2025), but other agencies remain. NED, for example, is behind both groups, with the main head of the hydra being OCCRP. Starting from NED, money flowed to OCCRP, defined as “independent,” then went to Europe and, at the time, also to Russia, for “media outlets” and other “independent journalists.” Due to its relocation and this subtlety of groups supposedly being independent, the support of Western secret services was erased. Lucy Komisar revealed that OCCRP employed more than 200 agents in about sixty countries, subsequently flooding several hundred journalists, including in France, with information. Between 2014 and 2023, for OCCRP alone, the organization was endowed with… 90 million dollars, of which 47 million came from the USA, the rest… from the governments of the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Denmark, or the Netherlands, among the main ones… Among the other denounced dubious funding sources is RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute, “the oldest British think tank on defense and security issues,” whose vice-president is David Petraeus… former director of the CIA… But the continuation of Lucy Komisar’s investigation strikes even harder, revealing the underbelly of the propaganda setups and fakes of Bellingcat and OCCRP, veritable factories for disinformation and manipulation of Western public opinion. And what follows isn’t pretty… you can discover it in this same article by the German Thomas Röper, who then details other dubious secrets… down to a recycled former East German Stasi agent.
