Hundreds arrested across Europe as French police crack encrypted network - Financial Times

French police’s cracking of an encrypted telephone system used by organised criminals led to hundreds of arrests across Europe and the seizure of millions of euros in cash, illegal drugs, weapons and vehicles, European crime agencies said on Thursday.

The UK’s National Crime Agency said the work by France’s Gendarmerie Nationale on the EncroChat service had led to 764 arrests in recent days, including of corrupt law enforcement officials, the seizure of 77 weapons and averted 200 potential murders being planned over the service.

In the Netherlands, which co-operated with the Gendarmerie on the investigation through the EU’s Europol and Eurojust agencies, the national police said they had arrested more than 100 suspects, seized tonnes of illegal drugs and shut down 19 laboratories producing synthetic narcotics.

Dutch police said in a statement that the force had seized nearly €20m during raids, while the NCA said on its website that it and other UK police forces had seized £54m in cash.

“Gendarmes from the centre for combating organised crime have achieved a technological feat: decrypting a substantial quantity of communications encoded by EncroChat,” the Gendarmerie said in a message on Facebook.

They added: “The results: it has been possible to detain hundreds of individuals linked to criminal groups across the world, following telephone taps made possible thanks to actions carried out by cyber-gendarmes.”

French prosecutors declined to give a figure for the numbers arrested following the decryption, saying that the operation was still under way.

The UK’s NCA said the EncroChat operation, which it called Operation Venetic, had been its broadest and deepest ever against organised crime.

A handout released by the UK’s Metropolitan Police shows £5.1m in cash, which officers say was seized as part of the EncroChat operation © Metropolitan Police/PA

Nikki Holland, the NCA’s director of investigations, said in a statement that a team of more than 500 officers at the national policing agency had been working on the operation, made possible by “superb work” with the force’s international partners.

“Together we’ve protected the public by arresting middle-tier criminals and the kingpins, the so-called iconic untouchables who have evaded law enforcement for years, and now we have the evidence to prosecute them,” she said.

A statement from French prosecutors said they had started work to try to decrypt encoded telecommunications devices as early as 2017. Investigators had been able to accelerate their work after receiving European funding at the start of 2019. It had been established that EncroChat operated using servers based in France.

The inquiry was able to bring together different pieces of information on the functioning of the encryption, according to the prosecutors, so that eventually they enabled investigators to read encoded messages.

The French authorities formed a national unit to investigate the resulting information on March 15, while the French and Dutch authorities signed an agreement to form a joint investigation team on April 10, co-operating through Eurojust and with the support of Europol.

In the UK, the NCA said it had started receiving information about the contents of communication between alleged criminals on April 1. Police forces had access to communications via EncroChat — which Ms Holland said had been “like having an inside person in every top organised crime group in the country” — until the night of June 12-13 when, according to French prosecutors, EncroChat warned users that its technology had been subject to “illegal seizure” by government entities.

The French authorities said 90 per cent of users of EncroChat — which they said sold handsets for €1,000 each and charged €1,500 for a six-month contract — were criminals. The NCA said it had found no evidence that any non-criminals were subscribing to the service.

The NCA said there were “law enforcement officials” among those arrested in the UK, although Ms Holland declined to identify them or their organisations, beyond saying that they were not senior figures.

Authorities in multiple other jurisdictions worldwide have been involved in the operation following the decryption of EncroChat, including Sweden and Norway, according to the NCA.

Additional reporting by Domitille Alain in Paris

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2020-07-02 17:13:43Z
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