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When the police infiltrate Sky ECC, the favorite encrypted messaging of organized crime: in “Special Envoy”, immersed in the secrets of organized crime
When the police infiltrate Sky ECC, the favorite encrypted messaging of organized crime: in “Special Envoy”, immersed in the secrets of organized crime
(SPECIAL SUBJECT / FRANCE 2)
Instructions on shipments of narcotics, photos of victims of score-settling… In 2019, the French judicial police came across a real gold mine by infiltrating the encrypted telephone messaging service Sky ECC, a sort of WhatsApp of organized crime. On April 25, in “Special Envoy”, a dizzying dive behind the scenes of organized crime.
If these seemingly ordinary phones sold for 2,000 euros with a six-month plan, it was because they were equipped with a special application, developed by a Canadian developer. An encrypted messaging that its designer presented as “the most secure that exists in the world”. Named Sky ECC, it quickly gained favor with the world’s great banditiers. In eight years, 170,000 of these devices have been used by criminals around the world.
Convinced of being safe on this messaging system reputed to be inviolable, they exchanged key information on their trafficking, instructions on drug deliveries… Some audio files even reveal assassination plans and accounts of executions. “Special Envoy” exclusively reveals photos that the thugs sent to each other via Sky ECC: images of score settling and torture, shipments of cocaine, gold ingots, suitcases of dirty money…
Live access to the exchanges of thousands of criminals
In 2019, in Nanterre, in the premises of the judicial police, investigators from the Sub-Directorate for the Fight against Cybercrime (SDLC, now OFAC) managed to infiltrate the messaging system. For two years, with police officers from the Anti-Narcotics Office (OFAST), they spied on criminals who communicated via Sky ECC.
They had access to the live exchanges of several thousand of them, in France and abroad, and this is the first time that they have allowed journalists to view some of these files. The icing on the cake for the PJ is that the billion pieces of data from the encrypted application are stored on servers in France. A gold mine: in total, more than a billion exchanges have been intercepted.
Dozens of arrests around the world
The work of investigators has led to dozens of arrests around the world. Like those, in 2021, of Otoniel, drug lord and successor to Pablo Escobar in Colombia, or of Raffaele Imperiale, the head of the Italian mafia hidden in Dubai. And also the dismantling of a very important drug trafficking network in Europe: the Kavač clan, one of the most powerful and violent in Serbia.
On Sky ECC, a conversation in which its bosses set up an ambush sends chills down the spine. Other discussions reveal the existence of a torture room in a bunker, a “house of horror” where the gang filmed their abuses against their rivals. During what remains to this day the biggest crackdown in the country’s history against organized crime, the police got their hands on more than a hundred weapons and 200,000 euros. Evidence from the Sky ECC files is at the heart of a sprawling trial that opened in Belgrade in 2022.
Extract from “Investigation into the messaging of crime”, a report to be seen in “Special Envoy” on April 25, 2024.
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