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Koblenz (dpa) - After the closure of what, according to the authorities, is probably the world's largest illegal marketplace on the Darknet, investigations into other suspects are ongoing.
The Koblenz attorney general Jürgen Brauer informed the German Press Agency on Wednesday: "There were other administrators and so-called managers who have not yet been identified."
Because of the aliases they used, their number is still unclear.
The DarkMarket platform was closed on Monday and its servers were shut down.
The 34-year-old alleged operator, an Australian, was arrested near the German-Danish border at the weekend, was in custody and, according to Brauer, still did not comment on the matter.
DarkMarket is said to have had almost 500,000 users and more than 2,400 sellers.
According to the Koblenz Public Prosecutor's Office, more than 320,000 transactions were carried out - mainly with drugs, but also with counterfeit money, stolen or forged credit card data, anonymous SIM cards and malware.
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According to Brauer, the illegal marketplace was supposed to have started in June 2019 in the so-called cyberbunker in Traben-Trarbach on the Moselle.
In the old bunker, a gang is said to have operated an illegal data center for criminal business in the Darknet on a large scale for years.
Hundreds of police officers excavated the underground cyberbunker in September 2019.
A lawsuit against eight suspected operators is currently underway in Trier.
In the DarkMarket case, investigators have now seized more than 20 servers in Moldova and Ukraine.
The data stored there should lead to new search approaches.
Attorney General Brauer assumes a direct connection with the Moselle valley: "We do not yet know whether the servers moved to Moldova and Ukraine immediately after the cyberbunker was shut down, but we suspect that the shutdown was the reason."
Press release from Tuesday