Brussels (AFP) – From torture and murder in the Netherlands and Serbia to an unprecedented web of corruption in Belgium, the Sky ECC investigation has shone a light into some of Europe’s darkest corners.
Sky ECC was a secure messaging app once prized by underworld drug barons. But, after it was cracked by investigators in 2021, it has brought some to their downfall.
Police from Belgium, France and the Netherlands are now sifting through a vast trove of messages sent within the secretive drug smuggling gangs, and they have begun to make arrests.
“It was as if we were sitting at the table with the criminals,” said Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol, the EU police coordination agency.
Last year, Belgian police tracking what was already reckoned to be a huge drug smuggling operation in the North Sea port of Antwerp noticed concentrated activity on the covert network.
