CANBERRA/AMSTERDAM — A global sting in which
organized crime gangs were sold encrypted phones that law enforcement officials
could monitor has led to more than 800 arrests and the confiscation of drugs,
weapons, cash, and luxury cars, officials said on Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
The operation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Australian, and European police ensnared suspects in Australia, Asia, Europe,
South America, and the
Middle East involved in the global
narcotics trade, the
officials said.
Millions of dollars in cash were seized in raids around the
world, along with 30 tonnes of drugs including more than eight tonnes of
cocaine.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the operation
had "struck a heavy blow against organized crime – not just in this
country, but ... around the world".
Operation Greenlight/Trojan Shield, conceived by Australian
police and the FBI in 2018, was one of the biggest infiltrations and takeovers
of a specialized encrypted network.
It began when US officials paid a convicted drug trafficker
to give them access to a smartphone that he had customized, on which he was
installing ANOM, also styled An0m, a secure encrypted messaging app. The phones
were then sold to organized crime networks through underworld distributors.
The FBI helped to infiltrate 12,000 devices into 300
criminal groups in more than 100 countries, Calvin Shivers of the FBI's
Criminal Investigative Division told reporters in The Hague.
Cocaine in fruit
In a pattern repeated elsewhere, one Australian underworld
figure began distributing phones containing the app to his associates,
believing their communications were secure because the phones had been rebuilt
to remove all capabilities, including voice and camera functions, apart from
ANOM.
As a result, there was no attempt to conceal or code the
details of the messages — which police were reading.
"It was there to be seen, including 'we’ll have a
speedboat meet you at this point', 'this is who will do this' and so on,"
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said.
"We have been in the back pockets of organized crime
... All they talk about is drugs, violence, hits on each other, innocent people
who are going to be murdered."
The phones were such a hit that Italian mafiosi, Asian
triads, biker gangs, and transnational drug syndicates all began using them,
providing the FBI and its partner forces around the world with a trove of 27
million messages.
Shivers said the FBI had been able to see photographs of
"hundreds of tonnes of cocaine that were concealed in shipments of
fruit."
Printers for gun parts
Australian police said they had arrested 224 people,
including members of outlawed motorcycle gangs, and disrupted 21 murder plots.
On Monday alone, they seized 104 firearms, including a
military-grade sniper rifle, as well as almost $35 million in cash, including
millions from a safe buried under a garden shed in a suburb of Sydney.
In Europe, there were 49 arrests in the Netherlands, 75 in
Sweden, and over 60 in Germany, where authorities seized hundreds of kilograms
of drugs, more than 20 weapons, and over 30 luxury cars and cash.
Finnish police not only detained almost 100 suspects and
seized 500kg of narcotics but also found a warehouse with 3-D printers used to
manufacture gun parts.
The operation also revealed that gangs were being tipped off
about police actions, which prompted "numerous high-level public
corruption cases in several countries", according to an affidavit from an
FBI agent.
Kershaw said the Australian underworld figure, who had
absconded, had "essentially set up his own colleagues" by
distributing the phones, and was now a marked man.
"The sooner he hands himself in, the better for him and
his family."
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