The app was deemed tamper-proof. It guaranteed its users perfect discretion. Using a Canadian technology telephone, traffickers from all countries took shelter behind an encryption system worthy of the level of security of heads of state to discuss their day-to-day business on a daily basis. Cocaine deliveries, laundering operations, ambush targets… On Sky ECC – the name of this communication tool – criminal scenarios were written in the shadows, far from the eyes of the police, until February 15, 2021…
That day, after several months of research, the Belgian police services managed to access live the content of some 1.5 million messages exchanged daily between 164,000 users on this application particularly popular with drug traffickers in the Benelux, but also in the Paris region: 12,000 users are listed in the Netherlands, 6,000 in Belgium, 2,000 in France.
Under the eyes of the investigators, an underground world finally comes to light. Text messages, photos and videos are intercepted on the fly. These discussions offer, in real time, a complete mapping of criminal projects, but also indications “from the inside” on the balance of power between the groups of traffickers. These unpublished archives are nevertheless based on identifiers and pseudonyms. A kind of specific literature, in jargon “texting” language. Cross-checks with ongoing investigations will make it possible to link sometimes obscure dialogues to the illicit activities of well-rooted groups.
111 indictments
The live surveillance phase, carried out jointly by the Belgian, French and Dutch services, ends with the first “Sky” crackdown by the Belgian police on March 9, 2021. A massive operation: 1,800 police officers are mobilized to carry out 200 searches and 48 arrests. On the balance sheet of the seizures, more than 17 tons of cocaine, 1.2 million euros, and complete arsenals. The investigators could not follow the discussions indefinitely without reacting. But the mountains of data collected remain an invaluable resource for launching or completing surveys. Especially since, a few months earlier, another reputedly secure communication system, EncroChat, was updated by the specialized gendarmes, under the aegis of the specialized interregional jurisdiction (JIRS) of Lille.
The jurisdiction in charge of the fight against organized crime (Junalco), created at the beginning of 2020, thus stores crucial information to accomplish its primary mission: to trace the networks of trafficking and target the “top of the spectrum” of organized crime. According to an investigator, “Sky ECC made it possible to make a diagnosis which we suspected would be extremely worrying, with a precise vision of the volumes concerned and the way in which disputes are settled, with an exceptional level of violence”.
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