Belgium police have seized almost 28 tons of cocaine after breaking into an encrypted phone network.
A major drug bust dating back to February led authorities to find 27.64 tons of cocaine at the port of Antwerp. According to CNN, the cocaine has a street value of 1.4 billion euros ($1.65 billion). On top of that, police obtained nearly 11 tons overnight on April 2 and April 3, the Belgian Federal Police said in a statement on Monday.
What helped authorities was an encrypted messaging service called Sky ECC. The service helped police specialists gain access to the criminals’ encrypted messages.
“During a judicial investigation into a potential service criminal organization suspected of knowingly providing encrypted telephones to the criminal environment, police specialists managed to crack the encrypted messages from Sky ECC,” reads the statement.
“This data provides elements in current files but also opened up new criminal offenses. The international smuggling of cocaine batches plays a prominent role in intercepted reports.”
The investigation is ongoing.
