Europol has carried out a large-scale operation against a notorious organized crime syndicate involved in cocaine trafficking and money laundering. The coordinated raids led to the arrest of 10 individuals, the seizure of an entire tourist hotel, several real estate properties, and over €100,000 ($116,106) in cash.

The breakthrough came from analyzing encrypted conversations retrieved from a secure messaging platform that was dismantled more than four years ago. The network in question was Sky ECC, operated by Sky Global, which law enforcement shut down in 2021 due to its widespread use by international criminal groups. Following the takedown, prosecutors issued indictments and arrest warrants against Sky Global’s CEO Jean-François Eap and former distributor Thomas Herdman.

Authorities also seized an extensive archive containing hundreds of millions of encrypted messages exchanged by criminals through the Sky ECC app, which relied on 512-bit elliptic-curve encryption. These communications remain a key tool for Europol in ongoing investigations under Operation Sky ECC and Operational Task Force LIMIT.

In this latest crackdown, investigators from Albania, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, led by Albania’s Special Anti-Corruption Structure (SPAK), used metadata from the Sky ECC messages to track large-scale cocaine shipments from South America to European ports. One suspect allegedly earned more than $40 million from these operations, with drugs passing through major entry points such as Antwerp and Rotterdam.

Among those arrested was the head of the crime group, who was also wanted in Italy on charges including murder, illegal explosives possession, attempted corpse concealment, threats, and obstruction of justice.

The Sky ECC case underscores the delicate balance between encrypted communication as a tool for privacy and its exploitation by organized crime to run transnational drug and money laundering networks.