Bellingcat

Bellingcat is an investigative organization that publishes research built from open sources, and that also sells training workshops and takes grants from foundations, lotteries and companies. It exists as a Netherlands foundation (Stichting Bellingcat), a dormant company in England, a Delaware corporation with United States charity status, and a Dutch production company of which the foundation holds 60 percent.

Origins and Registrations

Eliot Higgins founded Bellingcat in 2014; he has written that he raised just under 60,000 pounds on Kickstarter that year.¹ The English company Bellingcat (number 09858798) was incorporated on 5 November 2015 as a private company limited by guarantee, with Higgins as sole director, and its registered office has been in Oadby and in Leicester. Its accounts for the year to 31 December 2020 show 4,378 pounds in cash and a 25,026 pound loan account due to the director, and the company has filed no profit and loss account; its accounts for the year to 31 December 2025 were filed as those of a dormant company.²

Stichting Bellingcat was registered with the Kamer van Koophandel on 11 July 2018 under number 72136030.³ The 2019 to 2021 policy plan states that the English company was registered at the end of 2015 to run as a non-profit and that the Dutch foundation was set up in 2018 as the "global hub" for training and research.⁴ The first annual accounts of the foundation, covering 11 July 2018 to 31 December 2019, state that the foundation remained dormant until the second quarter of 2019 and that the English company was to be merged into it later in 2020; the English company remains on the register.⁵ A Dutch company, Bellingcat Productions B.V., was established on 9 July 2021, with the foundation as 60 percent shareholder.⁶

Boards and Advisers

The policy plan lists the first board of the foundation as Higgins (chairman), Dessislava Lange-Damianova (treasurer) and Aric Toler (secretary), and a supervisory board of Joseph Peeraer (chairman, described as an entrepreneur and philanthropist), Marietje Schaake (a former member of the European Parliament) and Yoeri Albrecht (director of the cultural centre De Balie).⁴ Toler served as director of research and training from November 2015 to September 2023, and Christo Grozev as executive director from February to December 2022.⁷

The foundation's current pages list an executive board of Higgins, Lange-Damianova and Giancarlo Fiorella; a supervisory board of Sander van Luik, Maria Teresa Ronderos and Miriam Struyk; and an international advisory board of Alan Jagolinzer, Algirdas Lipstas, Anya Niestat, Francis Fukuyama, Premesh Chandran and an external adviser, Emiel Jurjens.³ The 2021 and 2022 annual reports describe Lipstas as a former director of the Open Society Foundations and Niestat as legal director of the Docket Initiative of the Clooney Foundation for Justice; Fukuyama is described as a senior fellow at Stanford University.⁸ The executive director and the operations director of the foundation are each paid 90,000 euros a year, according to its remuneration policy, and supervisory board members are unpaid.³

Higgins was described in July 2016, in a piece he wrote for the Atlantic Council's UkraineAlert blog, as a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.⁹

Funding, 2019 to 2022

The foundation's own funding page states that Bellingcat does not solicit or accept money directly from governments, that it may take money from intergovernmental bodies such as the European Commission and the United Nations, and that it may take money distributed by a private foundation that itself accepts government funds.¹⁰ The policy plan of 2019 states that Bellingcat attracted "the attention (and financial support)" of the Open Society Foundations, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Adessium Foundation, and lists the National Endowment for Democracy as an institutional donor.⁴

The accounts for 2019, the first year of the foundation, show total income of 920,250 euros. The Dutch Postcode Lottery provided 250,000 euros and other non-profit organizations 155,403 euros: the Auxilium Foundation 100,000, the Human Rights Foundation 22,149, Charities Aid Foundation America 12,622, the "Open Society Foundation" 10,632 and Stichting QOSB 10,000. The note on income from companies reads in full that the foundation "received a donation of ZINC Network for the launch event of EUR 5.000". Grants received in advance at 31 December 2019 were 510,000 euros: the Dutch Postcode Lottery 250,000, Porticus Auxilium 100,000, Adessium 90,000 and Zandstorm CV 70,000. The accounts show no payment from the National Endowment for Democracy in 2019.⁵

In 2020 income was 1,715,624 euros. The National Endowment for Democracy appears for the first time, at 112,524 euros against a budget of 160,000, and a note records a further grant from it received in advance and to be settled in early 2021. The other non-profit income that year included the Auxilium Foundation (100,000), Stichting Saxum Volutum (100,000), Adessium (90,000), the Sigrid Rausing Trust (87,730) and Lighthouse Reports (15,157). Income from companies was 228,857 euros: Zandstorm CV 100,000, Adam Smith International 65,428, ZINC Network 54,511 (budgeted at 160,000), Chemonics International 5,323 and other companies 3,595. Income from governments and intergovernmental bodies was 3,876 euros, and the accounts state that Bellingcat accepts contributions only from international institutions such as the European Union, the OSCE and the United Nations.¹¹

For 2021 the National Endowment for Democracy line is 212,229 euros against a budget of 160,000. The same table lists NEF/Civitates (115,000), the Auxilium Foundation (100,000), Adessium (90,000), the Sigrid Rausing Trust (85,256), the Limelight Foundation (60,000), Founders Pledge (46,491) and Charities Aid Foundation America (31,846); the Dutch Postcode Lottery gave 333,333 euros and the Swedish Postcode Lottery 43,328. Income from companies was 43,331 euros, including ZINC Network at 10,358, the Nationwide Building Society at 11,176 and anonymous companies at 19,938. A note states that the Russian government had designated Bellingcat a foreign agent and that some donors therefore prefer to remain anonymous.¹²

The 2022 accounts record the National Endowment for Democracy at 87,041 euros against a budget of 75,000. Ten anonymous grants total 674,442 euros, with the largest three at 236,100, 145,833 and 100,000; Limelight gave 120,000, Civitates 115,000, Adessium 90,000 and the Sigrid Rausing Trust 89,253. Twenty anonymous grants from companies total 383,365 euros, and Zandstorm CV appears at minus 100,000 euros. The accounts state that the European Union provided 162,703 euros.⁶ The annual report for 2022 states that "last year marked the final year of project funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that provided funding for Russian-language workshops at no cost to journalists and human rights researchers based in Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia and the Caucasus."⁸

The notes to the 2022 accounts also contain a statement about the supervisory board. The foundation reports that it "received a generous donation of 100.000 EUR by the chair of the Supervisory Board in two instalments - in December 2019 and in January 2020," and that it refunded the amount in December 2022, three years after receiving it, "even though the Chairman deemed this unnecessary." The accounts add that the foundation "should have refunded it earlier in accordance with our wish for independence, and to avoid any conflict of interest," and that its donation acceptance policy was amended with effect from 1 January 2023 to bar donations from supervisory board members.⁶ The policy plan names Peeraer as chairman of the supervisory board in 2019.⁴

The 2022 accounts also list, among obligations related to current projects at 31 December 2022, 484,545 euros attributed to Custom House Financial Ltd.⁶ Companies House records a company numbered 04380026, now named Convera UK Limited, whose previous names were Custom House Financial (UK) Ltd and Custom House Currency Exchange (UK) Limited; the Bellingcat accounts do not identify the Custom House Financial Ltd of their ledger further.¹³

Funding, 2023 to 2025

In the 2023 accounts the National Endowment for Democracy line is zero. The 2023 note lists the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund at 162,635 euros, Limelight at 120,000, Civitates at 118,386 and the Sigrid Rausing Trust at 86,924, and twenty-two anonymous grants at 1,614,630 euros, against 674,442 euros from ten anonymous grants the year before. The accounts report total income of 3,978,146 euros.¹⁴ The Dutch Postcode Lottery's funding request for 2024 was not approved at that point; in February 2025 the lottery notified an annual donation of 600,000 euros for 2024 to 2028.¹⁴¹⁵

The 2024 accounts list the StartSmall Foundation at 4,803,535 euros, thirteen anonymous grants at 1,860,737 euros, the Sigrid Rausing Trust at 177,221, the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund at 153,175, Limelight at 120,000, Civitates at 115,000, the Proton Foundation at 63,494 and Charities Aid Foundation America at 48,073; the table totals 8,301,410 euros. The statement of income in the same accounts gives 1,927,307 euros for income from other non-profit organizations and 3,968,928 euros for total income.¹⁵¹⁶ The foundation announced on 16 May 2024 that StartSmall, Jack Dorsey's philanthropic initiative, had made a donation to be used over several years.¹⁷ The 2025 accounts show no StartSmall income against a budget of 483,559 euros, Wellspring at 417,439, the Sigrid Rausing Trust at 182,749, twenty-three anonymous grants at 1,445,279 and total income of 3,409,323 euros. Under income from companies the 2025 accounts list Custom House Financial Ltd at 72,608 euros for 2025 and 222,561 euros for 2024.¹⁶ The foundation's current funding page lists Civitates, the Dutch Postcode Lottery, the European Commission, the Limelight Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, the StartSmall Foundation, the Swedish Postcode Foundation and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, and states that other funders are known to its auditors but not named.¹⁰

Bellingcat US

Bellingcat US, Inc. (originally Bellingcat Fund Inc.) was established as a Delaware corporation in 2022 and received its Internal Revenue Service exemption as a charity under section 501(c)(3) with a ruling date of 1 November 2022. Its return for 2024 gives an address in Wilmington, Delaware, Evan Guillemin as principal officer and treasurer, five voting board members, eight employees and a mission "to be the leader in open-source fact finding." Revenue was 459,649 dollars in 2023 and 6,772,053 dollars in 2024, with 1,560,628 dollars of expenses and 6,301,770 dollars in assets at the end of 2024. The schedule of contributors in the return carries the entry "RESTRICTED" in place of donor names. The return was prepared by a firm named Abacus Hive.¹⁸¹⁹ The foundation's 2024 accounts state that a new board of the American entity was appointed that year and that the entity was renamed Bellingcat US in February 2025; the foundation's pages name Jennifer Coogan as its executive director.³¹⁵

MH17

The Joint Investigation Team stated at its press meeting of 24 May 2018 that the Buk launcher that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 came from the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, and added: "Earlier, the investigation collective Bellingcat came up with the same conclusion." The text continues that the team carries out "our own independent investigation."²⁰ The English text of the judgment of the District Court of The Hague of 17 November 2022 in the MH17 criminal case contains no occurrence of the words Bellingcat, Higgins, Grozev or The Insider.²¹

Salisbury

On 26 September 2018 Bellingcat and The Insider published their identification of the man travelling as "Ruslan Boshirov", a suspect in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and the death of Dawn Sturgess, as the GRU colonel Anatoliy Chepiga.²² The 2019 to 2021 policy plan records that Bellingcat researchers appeared at a press briefing at the House of Commons in October 2018.⁴ In the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, the closing statement for Counter Terrorism Policing states, of the identification of the three suspects as Mishkin, Chepiga and Sergeev, that the identifications were "publicly announced by CTP in September 2021, and earlier than that by media organisations." The same statement relies on open-source images from a Russian military command school in identifying Chepiga and cites a "heat map" that Bellingcat published for a mobile telephone registered in the name of the third suspect, Sergey Fedotov.²³

Navalny

On 14 December 2020 Bellingcat published, with The Insider, CNN and Der Spiegel, an investigation which stated that telecommunications and travel data and passport files showed a unit of the FSB working under the cover of its Criminalistics Institute to have shadowed Alexei Navalny on more than 30 overlapping flights in 2017, 2019 and 2020, and named three operatives, Alexey Alexandrov, Ivan Osipov and Vladimir Panyaev, as having travelled alongside him to Novosibirsk and followed him to Tomsk before the poisoning of August 2020. The article records that the OPCW had identified the agent as a cholinesterase inhibitor resembling the Novichok group.²⁴

Far-Right Network Investigations

Bellingcat's article of 6 November 2019 explained how to access and interpret the leaked database of the Iron March forum, and stated that the Internet Archive had removed the file while it remained available from Distributed Denial of Secrets.²⁵ On 19 December 2019 it published "Transnational White Terror: Exposing Atomwaffen And The Iron March Networks" on the network around Atomwaffen Division, written by Alexander Reid Ross, Emmi Bevensee and a researcher identified as ZC, in collaboration with the Autonomous Disinformation Research Network.²⁶

Russian Designations

The 2022 accounts state that the Russian government designated Bellingcat a foreign agent in 2021 and an "undesirable organisation" in 2022, an "upgrade", and that funders of an undesirable organization can face administrative or criminal action.⁶ The Moscow Times reported that Bellingcat and The Insider were labelled foreign agents in October 2021.²⁷ On 15 July 2022 the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia declared the activity of Bellingcat undesirable, together with The Insider and a Czech group; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that the Prosecutor General's Office gave as its reason a "threat" to the country, and that the list of undesirable organizations then held 56 entries.²⁸ Bellingcat's statement of the same day gave the designation's stated motive as a threat "to the foundations of the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation", and noted that its website had been blocked by court order on 16 March.²⁹