Judicial investigation opened on the dating site coco.gg, implicated in homophobic attacks and ambushes

More than 23,000 acts have been reported as having been committed through this platform, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.

Three days after the controversial dating site was shut down, a judicial investigation was opened into the coco.gg platform, which was implicated in homophobic attacks and ambushes, announced the Paris public prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, on Friday, June 28. The financial and cyber sections of the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime (Junalco), already in charge of the preliminary investigation opened in December, remain seized of the investigations. More than 23,000 acts have been reported as having been committed through coco.gg, the prosecutor said.

The judicial investigation concerns in particular the offence of “providing an online platform to enable an illicit transaction by an organised gang” and the laundering of the sums withdrawn from it, said the magistrate, specifying that bank accounts were frozen in Hungary, Lithuania, Germany and the Netherlands and that more than 5 million euros were seized.

A man of Italian nationality, aged 44 and suspected of being the administrator of the site, was interviewed by magistrates in Bulgaria, reports the prosecutor. Three of his relatives, “suspected of having played an active role in the administration of the platform or profited from the offenses”were heard in France and left free at the end of their hearing.

Investigators also collected testimonies from representatives of the Point of Contact, Innocence in Danger and Action Against Child Prostitution and Sexual Violence associations, who called for the site to be closed. “Coco.gg has been known for many years as a facilitator of the commission of various offenses, including acts of child crime, pimping, prostitution, rape, sale of drugs, ambush, and even homicide”, the Paris prosecutor recalled in a previous press release. Since the opening of the preliminary investigation, Junalco has centralized the procedures of 71 prosecutors’ offices, to the detriment of more than 480 victims.