Drug trafficking, assassinations, money laundering, extortion, kidnappings ... A joint operation by French and Dutch judicial and police authorities has led to "multiple arrests" in several European countries. It prevented the perpetration of many criminal acts, we learned during a press conference in the Netherlands, Thursday, July 2 at the headquarters of Eurojust, the body for judicial cooperation between European countries.

The operation led to the dismantling of a global encrypted communications network, called EncroChat, used almost exclusively by criminal groups.

"Over 100 million messages" from intercepted criminals

The police managed to infiltrate Encrochat, said Janine van den Berg, chief of the Dutch police. "It is as if we were at the criminals' table, live," she said. "We used the fact that criminals blindly trust crypto-communication and speak freely," added his colleague Andy Kraag, comparing this information to "a gold mine providing us with evidence that would have cost us years in normal time ".

France had decided to seize Eurojust in 2019 with the support of Europol, the European criminal police agency. The Franco-Dutch investigation has made it possible in recent months to intercept and decipher in real time, without their knowledge, "more than 100 million messages" exchanged via EncroChat between criminals around the world.

This major intrusion ended on June 13 when the network realized, according to a "warning" message addressed to all of its customers, that it had been "illegally infiltrated by government entities and then advised to get rid of "their phones immediately." But it was "too late for them, because we had already had access to millions of messages," said Andy Kraag.

Avoided kidnappings, murders and shootings

According to the authorities, almost all of EncroChat's clients ("90% to 100%") are linked to organized crime. Some 50,000 of these phones were in circulation in 2020.

As of 2017, the use of these encrypted phones by criminals was detected in France during operations against organized crime by the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie, which has since worked on the operation of these encrypted communications .

The investigation was conducted from 2018 by the prosecution of the Interregional Specialized Jurisdiction (Jirs) of Lille, due to the location of servers ensuring the operation of EncroChat in the territory of its jurisdiction. Judicial information was opened on May 28.

If France does not wish to communicate details of the operations in progress for the time being, the Dutch authorities assure that the infiltration of EncroChat has prevented the commission of "dozens of violent criminal acts", including kidnappings , murders and shootings.

"It is shocking to see with what facility and without the least scruples this type of serious criminal acts are debated and planned [on EncroChat], they insist. 

"Leaks" within the police

In the Netherlands alone, the investigation led to the arrest of "more than 100 suspects", the seizure of "more than 8000 kg of cocaine and 1.2 tonnes of crystal methamphetamine", the dismantling of "19 synthetic drug laboratories", the seizure of "dozens of automatic firearms", "luxury watches", "25 cars, some including secret compartments" as well as "nearly 25 million euros in liquid".

But the investigations, the results of which will still be used "for years", have also revealed "indications of leakage from the police force", which are taken "extremely seriously", said the chief of the Dutch police. They demonstrated "clearly the role of corruption along the chain of illicit trafficking," corroborated Wil van Gemert, deputy director of operations at Europol.

With AFP

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