Greek police deepen investigations into Albanian gang networks

Greek police are deepening investigations into matters related to murders, drugs, and the trafficking of irregular migrants after the discovery of communications through the encrypted platforms "Sky ECC" and "Encrochat", developed on Greek territory.

The communications were provided to Greece by EUROPOL in the fall of 2023 in approximately 4,500 files with over 25,000 messages exchanged between suspected persons involved in criminal networks, especially drug trafficking.

According to the Greek police, after arrest warrants for over 15 Albanian citizens, suspected of trafficking marijuana from Albania to Greece and cocaine trafficking from Spain to Greece and Albania. Investigations are being carried out to uncover other criminal activities.

According to official Greek police sources, the Internal Police Service, by order of the Prosecutor, has also included investigations into the connections of senior Greek anti-drug officers with drug trafficking figures, including a suspected Albanian citizen serving a sentence in Greek prisons.

Greek police announced detention measures against a Greek police officer and two citizens, an Albanian and a Greek, suspected of drug trafficking.

The Greek press published a document on Monday in which several phone numbers intercepted by the Greek anti-drugs agency were handwritten on a piece of paper. According to the Greek press, the Greek anti-drugs officer sent the document, via the "Sky ECC" platform, to one of the traffickers, in order to signal him.

In the period 2020-2021, as part of a coded operation "Limit", the European Agency "Europol" in cooperation with the national authorities of France, Belgium and the Netherlands discovered the encrypted communication application Sky ECC, which has been used by 90% of persons suspected of criminal crimes mainly in the field of drugs worldwide.

Based on their content, EUROPOL distributed the communication files to member states for local police to investigate crimes. Greece was the last of the 27 countries to receive the relevant file in autumn 2023.

Based on information from EUROPOL, the Special Prosecution Office against Crime and Corruption (SPAK) has so far cracked down on at least nine powerful criminal organizations in Albania, made dozens of arrests and shed light on serious criminal events of recent years.

Europol: MATRIX another recently discovered communication platform

A few days ago, EUROPOL announced an international police operation that has uncovered another encrypted messaging service used by suspected members of criminal groups called MATRIX.

According to EUROPOL, for three months, police authorities were able to monitor messages from potential criminals, which will now be used to support other investigations.

According to EUROPOL, a messaging service made by criminals for criminals, MATRIX, was first discovered by Dutch authorities on the phone of a criminal convicted of the murder of a Dutch journalist in 2021.

According to EUROPOL, the platform's infrastructure was technically more complex than previous platforms such as Sky ECC and EncroChat. The founders were convinced that the service was superior and more secure than previous applications used by criminals, EUROPOL says.

EUROPOL also provided technical details regarding the platform where users could only join the service if they received an invitation. According to EUROPOL, the infrastructure to run MATRIX consisted of more than 40 servers in several countries with important servers located in France and Germany.

Using innovative technology, police authorities were able to intercept the messaging service and monitor activity on the service for three months, EUROPOL said. According to EUROPOL, more than 2.3 million messages in 33 languages ​​were intercepted and decrypted during the investigation.

The intercepted messages are related to serious crimes such as international drug trafficking, arms trafficking and money laundering, EUROPOL says.

Albanian police experts suspect that communications on this platform have been widely used by Albanian criminal networks./VOA