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"Used mainly by Albanians", the breakdown of "Sky ECC" reveals the "house of horrors" in Serbia where victims were executed on live video

2022-11-30 10:34:31Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

"Used mainly by Albanians", the breakdown of "Sky ECC"

From torture and murder in the Netherlands and Serbia to an unprecedented network of corruption in Belgium, Sky ECC's investigation has shed light on some of Europe's darkest corners.

Sky ECC was a secure messaging app once prized by drug lords. But after being hit by investigators in 2021, it has brought some down.

Police from Belgium, France and the Netherlands are now looking into a huge range of messages sent within underground drug-smuggling gangs, and they are starting to make arrests.

"It was like we were sitting at the table with the criminals," said Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol, the EU's police coordination agency.

Last year, Belgian police, tracking what was already considered a major drug smuggling operation in the North Sea port of Antwerp, noticed concentrated activity in the underground network.
More than 48 people were arrested in a series of raids on 9 March 2021 and 200 premises were searched, thanks in part to evidence in messages extracted from Sky ECC data.

Antwerp is known as Europe's main port of entry for cocaine from Latin America – 90 tonnes were seized last year alone.

In parallel, French investigators were examining an "undeclared" communications network located on servers in France, uncovering more criminal records.

More than a year and a half later, detectives on both sides of the border agree that the Sky ECC investigation marked a turning point in the fight against drug gangs.

"House of Horrors"

Eric Snoeck, director general of Belgium's Federal Judicial Police, told AFP that authorities have more than a billion Sky ECC messages in their possession.

"We used a relatively small portion of the available evidence," he said. "It is a work in progress and will take years to complete."

Since the discovery, more than 1,200 people have been arrested for questioning in Belgium and 510 criminal cases opened and informed by Sky ECC data.

This week, leaked messages on the secret network allowed police to launch a cross-border operation to dismantle a "super-cartel" thought to control a third of Europe's cocaine trade.
Officers in five countries arrested 49 suspects, including six suspected Dubai-based drug lords.

Antwerp police alone have opened 257 case files based on the new evidence.

The investigations are making progress in tracking down drug dealers, but they have also shown how deeply the gangs have penetrated Belgium's society and economy.

In September, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced reinforcements for the police investigative service and warned that the reach of organized crime extends far beyond the country's ports.

And if the scale of the networks is staggering, their violence is disturbing.

"They have imported into Europe behavior that we thought was contained in Latin America," said Remy Heitz, prosecutor general at the Paris appeals court.

“Terror, murder, people being executed on live video and shared with laughing viewers. This is how they manage these businesses."
Snoeck describes "a level of violence completely unheard of before" and cites the discovery of shipping containers equipped as torture chambers in the Netherlands.

"For a few thousand euros, for a contract that was not fulfilled, they kill without hesitation - sometimes after hours of agony - people they were working with hours before," said Snoeck.
Text messages exchanged on the encrypted network allowed investigators to find a "house of horrors" in Serbia near the capital Belgrade, where victims were dismembered and fed into a meat grinder.

Spread of violence
While most of the senior figures arrested so far lived in Dubai, the Western Balkans has also proved a hotspot for gangs.

After English, the most common language used at Sky ECC was Albanian, investigators found.

Data from Sky ECC, which was marketed by now-defunct Canadian firm Sky Global, has been shared with authorities in 22 countries, including Colombia and Brazil.

Investigators who had already dealt with the Moroccan-Dutch "Mocro-Mafia" and the "Ndrangheta Mafia" of southern Italy, now know that Latin American cartels are implanted on European soil.

"I am very worried," a French judge told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"We are underestimating the danger of these networks in terms of destabilizing the state and spreading violence in all parts of society."


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