Geostrategy.rs: Investigative Journalism: Who is the Investigator?

    BEOGRADE, SERBIA, April 16, 2023 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Bellingcat was founded in 2014 in Great Britain by blogger Elliot Higgins. His new media specialized in the analysis of world conflicts. Higgins researched video footage from Syria and came to the conclusion that the country's leadership used cluster bombs and chemical weapons against citizens. The question is, how can a blogger judge what is happening on the ground without being there?

Among his Bellingcat grantors: the Dutch Adesium Foundation, the American NDA Foundation, the Danish National Postal Lottery, the companies Zandstorm and Stichting Saxum Volutum, and the British Sigrid Rausing Foundation.

The most famous member of Bellingcat is Hristo Groziev. He worked for Radio Free Europe, financed by the US government. In 1995 Grozev founded a radio station in Bulgaria. In Russia, Grozev launched Radio Nika, Channel Melodia, and Eldoradio. He also worked on media projects in the Baltic States, Finland, Bulgaria, and Hungary.

Where does a simple journalist from Bulgaria get his money? Behind his radio stations, John Kluge, a U.S. cable TV founder and venture capitalist, served in U.S. military intelligence during World War II.

In 1995, Kluge began alternately opening radio stations in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In Russia, the Baltic States, Hungary, Finland, and Bulgaria, his corporation Metromedia International operated freely in the 1990s. All these assets were managed by the young Hristo Groziev.

In 2006, Grozev sold his Russian assets and invested the money in Europe. Besides Kluge, it is necessary to mention one more person who is behind Groziev and his media projects, and that is Karl von Habsburg, grandson of the last emperor of Austria-Hungary, who is in favor of creating an armed force of the European Union and considers Russia, China, and Serbia to be countries threatening the world.

According to Grozev himself, his goal is to preserve freedom of speech and to fight against the "militarization" of information. In fact, he spreads sometimes blatantly false information through his media, since his network has grown so large that it allows him to broadcast anything to tens of millions of viewers, readers, and listeners around the world.

Groziev claims he gets his information from open and accessible sources. He says Russian special services are behind numerous actions against him and is particularly disgusted by the intelligence services. That said, Groziev presents in his investigations such data as phone lists, airline passenger lists, and databases of various agencies, and admits that some of the data were obtained by bribing officials.

Renowned Bulgarian journalist Velislava Dureva shared her opinion about the quality of Hristo Grozev's investigations. She does not consider him a journalist, but an adventurer. Dureva graduated in journalism from Sofia State University and has extensive experience working on television and making documentaries. She has published more than two thousand newspaper articles, interviews, analyses, and commentaries on current affairs. She is a laureate of the Bulgarian Association of Journalists.

The full investigation is available in video format https://vimeo.com/817483657

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