Berlin Prosecutors Handle Over 600 Encrochat Cases

Sat 14th Jun, 2025

In a significant development in the fight against organized crime, the Berlin Public Prosecutor's Office has reported that it is currently managing more than 600 cases linked to the encrypted messaging service, Encrochat. This follows the successful decryption of the service's data in 2020, which has since led to a multitude of ongoing investigations.

As of now, the office has filed charges in approximately 250 cases. However, nearly 120 of these investigations have been closed due to insufficient evidence to proceed with prosecution. Presently, there are still 88 cases under active investigation.

The figures presented by the Berlin Prosecutor's Office focus exclusively on individual legal proceedings rather than broader investigative complexes. This distinction is important as it may result in discrepancies when compared to statistics provided by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), due to the combining or separation of certain cases throughout the investigative process.

Encrochat, known for its sophisticated encryption, was widely utilized by criminals for conducting illegal transactions. Law enforcement agencies in the Netherlands and France succeeded in breaching the service in early 2020, allowing them to retrieve millions of confidential communications. This breakthrough led to a wave of arrests across Europe, with authorities still grappling with the extensive data analysis required to process the information obtained.

In Berlin alone, around 1.6 million chat messages linked to nearly 750 users were intercepted. The Berlin Regional Court is now regularly hearing cases involving individuals charged with drug-related and weapons offenses facilitated through these encrypted devices. Additionally, there are ongoing investigations following the European Union's law enforcement agency, Europol, managing to decrypt another encrypted communication system, Sky ECC, in late 2020, which also yielded millions of messages from users worldwide.


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