2023-06-27 10:29:56
More than 6,500 people arrested, 900 million euros seized: the dismantling in 2020 of the global encrypted communications network EncroChat has severely shaken international organized crime, according to a first assessment drawn Tuesday by Europol.
The European police, Europol and judicial cooperation agencies, Eurojust, as well as the French and Dutch prosecutors presented this hunting board on Tuesday during a press conference in Lille (north), from where the investigation had been launched in 2018 following locating servers running EncroChat.
At this stage, 6,658 people have been arrested, including 197 “high-value targets”, nearly 900 million euros in criminal funds seized or frozen, more than 100 tons of cocaine, 160 tons of cannabis, 923 weapons or 271 seized houses or properties, Europol list in a press release.
The sentences handed down in the resulting proceedings amount to 7,134 years in prison.
“The dismantling of EncroChat in 2020 sent shockwaves through organized crime groups in Europe and beyond,” said Europol.
The infiltration of this communications network, which promised criminal groups absolute discretion and an absence of traceability and whose servers were located in France, made it possible to intercept 115 million “criminal conversations” from around 60,000 users.
“Panic Pine”
The investigations carried out in the process in the countries of the European Union and third parties which have requested the sharing of information have contributed to preventing “violent attacks, attempted murder, acts of corruption and drug trafficking in large scale”.
“Users were particularly concentrated in the countries of origin and destination of illicit drug trafficking as well as in money laundering centers,” notes Europol.
In July 2020, the French and Dutch judicial and police authorities announced that they had dismantled this network, following having infiltrated it.
EncroChat sold for around 1000 euros fully encrypted phones, without camera, microphone, GPS or USB port, with a “panic pin code” option allowing a flash erase.
The infiltration had ended on June 13, 2020 when the network realized, according to an “alert” message sent to all its customers, that it had been “illegally infiltrated” by “governmental entities”. He had advised users to get rid of their phones “immediately”.
The operation made it possible to identify “criminals among the most wanted in the world”, including “an important Danish criminal (…), wanted in particular for 17 assassinations”, and arrested in 2020 in Dubai, according to the French gendarmerie. “For Great Britain alone, more than 200 assassination plots have been foiled.”
Investigation of the “source” file
Eight drug traffickers arrested thanks to the decryption of EncroChat were also sentenced on June 16 in Nancy to sentences ranging from one year suspended to 12 years in prison.
But a file remains open, that concerning the organizers of the network itself, which has been the subject of a judicial investigation opened since May 2020 by the Specialized Interregional Jurisdiction (Jirs) of Lille.
The “main leaders of EncroChat” and its developers have “might be identified”, announced the prosecutor of Lille, Carole Etienne, during the press conference.
She said that three of them have been indicted, and two placed in pre-trial detention.
According to elements of the investigation of which AFP has knowledge, these are three men, including two brothers, of Spanish nationality, indicted in the summer of 2022.
Their defense challenged these indictments, an appeal on which the Douai Court of Appeal (northern France) was to rule on June 14, but did not communicate its decision.
For European lawyers defending alleged members of high-level organized crime in incidental proceedings that they consider illegal, this recourse to Douai is one of the last hopes of finding a legal loophole in the French “source” part of EncroChat.
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