ANP
In collaboration with
Brabant transmission
News from the NOS•yesterday, 22:48
Police and prosecutors think a man from Eindhoven was one of the people behind EncroChat. The messaging service was popular with criminals and had around 12,000 users in the Netherlands alone.
The 47-year-old from Eindhoven was arrested in June along with two other suspects. They are suspected of being members of a criminal organization. According to the prosecutor, they helped commit crimes.
By secretly entering the messaging service in 2020, the police were able to track the criminals. Thanks to intercepted messages, for example, the torture chamber at Wouwse Plantage it’s a cash deposit in Eindhoven discovers. Serious violent crimes, murderers, coke dealers and drug labs also entered the scene.
The users had cryptophones that could not be “intercepted”, or so they thought. Because the police found the central computers, confiscated them and were able to see all the chats and photos. In the utmost secrecy, investigators got their hands on over 20 million messages. This has provided a wealth of evidence in hundreds of studies.
According to the prosecutor, the suspects were in the “middle management”. This indicates that they are not seen as the great leaders.
A firearm and ammunition were found at the Eindhoven resident. The court ruled today that the man can leave his cell tomorrow, pending trial. The other two suspects have already been released.
Privacy protection
Lawyers are second Brabant transmission very critical. They think that the police and the judiciary have, so to speak, raked everything with a large trawl without knowing who and what they would encounter.
With that method they would have seriously violated privacy. Lawyers want judges to rule out chats as evidence, although this has not happened in previous similar cases.
