"No more robberies, now everyone works with drugs"

More than 1600 policemen and masked members of the special forces, supplied with weapons and ammunition, were ordered in the early morning of March 9 to go into action in the vicinity of the Belgian port city of Antwerp. More than 200 locations were searched in the largest police operation ever carried out in the country and potentially one of the most significant actions against increasingly powerful drug gangs in Western Europe.

The British "Guardian" writes that there are hopes that "Operation Sky" could contribute to the downfall of an entire generation of local drug lords, although the paper points out that the Belgian and Dutch "godfathers" are now mostly hiding in Dubai and Turkey, believing that they are beyond the reach of the authorities there.

An incredible 27 tons of cocaine were seized on the quays of Antwerp, in cargo ships and safe houses. The estimated value of the drugs is 1,4 billion euros, and dozens of people were arrested. The action is seen as a severe blow to what Belgian Attorney General Frederik van Leeuw calls "a world where morality has completely disappeared". However, the British newspaper points out that "Operation Sky" also pointed to a worrying trend, since Europe has become the favorite market of Colombian cartels, surpassing the United States in this regard. The reason for this is higher drug prices and lower risks posed by European governments in terms of interdictions, extraditions and asset seizures.

Jeremy McDermott, a former British military officer who is now the executive director of the "Insight Crime" organization, said that a kilogram of cocaine in the USA is worth up to 28 dollars, while the average price in Europe is 000 dollars, and in some parts of Europe it reaches even 40 dollars.

"This means more money and less risk," said McDermott for "The Guardian" and added that the leading Colombian drug dealers easily made the decision to redirect to Europe. "Antwerp and Rotterdam are so attractive because they are some of the most efficient ports in the world, handling huge volumes of containers, which allows smugglers to operate at a scale that suits them."

Due to the methods of operation in major European ports where Colombians hire Dutch and Belgian criminals to transfer goods to Italian, Albanian, British and Irish organized crime networks, the level of corruption and violence has risen to a level never seen in this part of the world. "We no longer have robberies," Joris van der A, a journalist and columnist, told the Guardian. "Now everybody works with drugs".

Among those arrested in "Operation Nebo" last month, in addition to those who are considered responsible for almost daily violent incidents in the city, there were also active policemen, an employee of the state prosecutor's office, public servants, tax officials and employees of the hospital administration. They are suspected of passing information to criminal gangs. Fifty people were arrested that morning, but many more arrests followed later. Last Sunday, 50 more people were arrested and raids were carried out at 11 locations in Antwerp and a number of other cities.

"Operation Sky" was planned for two years and was caused by a growing sense of fear in the city. Antwerp Mayor Bart de Viver has been given 24-hour security after receiving death threats. However, the extent of the savagery engulfing Antwerp may have become clearest last summer when a torture chamber was discovered in a village 340 miles from the city.

A makeshift prison made of seven shipping containers was found, six of which served as cells for prisoners. The last one, which contained a dental chair with straps for tying hands and feet, was adapted for torture. Scissors, scissors, scalpels, tape, needles, masks and black cotton head bags provide a gruesome glimpse of what went on in that room.

However, despite numerous earlier calls, "Operation Sky," according to Belgian prosecutors, only became possible after the decryption of a messaging app known as SKY ECC, a Canadian communications company that prosecutors suspect is a criminal organization posing as a legitimate business for people who they like privacy.

Prosecutors said that smartphones with the SKY ECC application, but with microphones and GPS functions removed, were distributed throughout the city to people working for drug gangs.

There are 171 SKY ECC devices registered worldwide, mainly in Europe, North America, several Central and South American countries - mainly Colombia - and the Middle East. The "Guardian" points out that it is striking that 000 percent of active users are located in Belgium (25) and the Netherlands (6000), and half of them are in the vicinity of the port of Antwerp.

By "breaking into" the SKY ECC, Belgian police claim to have penetrated a communications network used by drug dealers, those who blackmail, threaten and bribe, and which is so trusted by criminals that photographs and orders to kill are freely exchanged along with insider financial and operational information.

Over the course of three weeks, officers were able to directly monitor messages in real time, gather information, act only in cases where they judged lives to be at risk, gaining unprecedented insight into an increasingly powerful and sinister criminal network operating from the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam .

"The photos are worse than what I've seen on some TV shows," Von Leuw told reporters about the images found on the devices.

"Settling accounts, contract killings, photos of victims, messages saying that if they don't find the target, they will attack the family." "Absolutely unimaginable violence," he said.

Belgian prosecutors said investigators had intercepted a total of about XNUMX billion encrypted messages, nearly half of which have been decrypted, but that they require months of work and are likely to lead to new lines of inquiry. In the prosecutor's office, they are realistic about the impact of "Operation Nebo" on the criminal underworld. "We are aware that criminals will be flexible, look for and find new ways of communication," the spokeswoman told The Guardian. "We will have to be vigilant and monitor these new technologies." However, Van der A, who is following the consequences at street level, believes that "Operation Sky" will be a turning point - for better or for worse.

"It's a big blow because, in Belgium and a lot of the criminal underworld in Holland, they really believed in Sky as a system," he said. "They were so full of confidence, and the police now have so much information about the organizational structure of the underworld, about banking, all the corrupt contacts have been arrested. It takes years to create such networks".

"I think a whole generation of criminals will be replaced. Twenty-seven tons of cocaine is a lot, and they lost it. In South America, they will think that they should no longer do business with the Belgians and the Dutch".

“So it's very quiet right now. Everyone is waiting out the storm and wondering what the police know. In time, they will go after the boys in Dubai. However, the question remains, who will replace them".

The directors of the firm that facilitates the deals of criminals reject the blame

SKY ECC has denied that police compromised its encrypted messaging platform, claiming instead that police actually hacked a malicious phishing app, which was illegally distributed under the name SKY ECC.

Jean-Francois Ip, CEO of SKY ECC, and Thomas Herdman, a former distributor of Sky global devices, were indicted on March 12 in the United States for participating in a conspiracy to violate the Racketeer and Corrupt Organizations Act. Both pleaded not guilty. Ip said "the baseless accusations of involvement in criminal activities of me and our company are completely false".