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October 25, 2024

Greetings From Amsterdam,

Our new collaborative investigation alongside 12 media partners across Europe and Canada exposes a world of violence and mayhem that unfolded inside the secret confines of one brand of encrypted phones. In this edition of OCCRP Weekly, we’re unpacking The Crime Messenger — the most comprehensive look to date into the Canadian start-up Sky Global, and how its products were used by organized crime.

We’ll also see how miners in Paraguay are paying to work in dangerous quarries, how a fugitive lawyer convicted of fraud managed to build a successful practice in Cyprus, and take a look at messages sent between senior Airbus executives and a middleman on controversial contracts. Let’s get into it.


** The Crime Messenger: How Sky ECC Phones Became a Tool of the Criminal Trade
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Sky phones looked just like ordinary iPhones or BlackBerrys. The only difference was that their camera, microphone, and GPS were disabled, and their calculator was replaced with a pre-loaded, encrypted messenger app: Sky ECC.

Sky Global pitched them as impenetrable. The Vancouver-based company was so confident it could provide users with total privacy that it offered a $5 million reward to anyone who could find a vulnerability in the encryption. In 2021, European police did just that — and uncovered hundreds of millions of Sky ECC messages, photos, and voice notes cataloging global cocaine smuggling routes, arguments over the logistics of heists, plots to carry out murders, and boasts about gruesome murders already carried out. It was “as if we were at a table with the criminals,” one law enforcement officer said.

The decrypted messages have provided evidence for criminal investigations across Europe in the years since, including a crackdown on a “super cartel” responsible for a third of the continent’s cocaine trade. They’ve also led to the indictment of Sky Global’s founder and 30 others linked to the company earlier this year. Sky maintains that criminal activity was strictly against its terms of use, and that it did all it could to enforce this while still offering its users the privacy they were paying for.

Despite ongoing criminal proceedings, the company’s inner workings have remained opaque — until now ([link removed]) . Reporters from OCCRP and 12 partner newsrooms gained access to around 3,800 files of evidence, police reports, chat logs, and other materials from the French investigation. They provide unprecedented insights into the company, as well as how organized crime operates in the modern age.

In interviews with French investigators, Sky employees expressed confusion over aspects of how the company worked, like why it didn’t have a marketing budget to help them reach out to new clients — or who its clients even were.

That’s because the company used a complicated network of distribution firms to dole out products, none of which had a track record in telecommunications. Instead, one of its biggest distributors was founded by three people with criminal histories. Another was co-owned by the business partner of a convicted arms trafficker. Employees of yet another key distributor sent messages about known customers with ties to the “African mafia” and Serbian “gangs” — evidence that the criminal activity happening in Sky ECC channels was not a secret to those distributing the tool.

Distribution companies, in turn, relied on local resellers who were plugged into criminal networks. They would meet pre-vetted customers in cafes or hotel lobbies, slinging phones and a six-month subscription to the messaging service in exchange for 1,000 euros cash — a steep price compared to trusted encryption services such as Signal, which is free.

One of the service’s key perks was the ability to remotely wipe data if a phone’s owner was in “distress.” This happened several times after Belgian police arrested people under investigation for violent crimes related to cocaine trafficking — providing the impetus for their interest in Sky Global.
Some of Sky’s resellers were themselves hardcore criminals. Srđan Lalić, a member of Serbia’s infamous Principi gang, is a prime example. He says he brought in as much as 120,000 euros a month in sales for Sky, and was known as the company’s “Balkan representative.” He also used Sky ECC himself, exchanging play-by-plays of violent murders he committed alongside fellow gang members. At one point, he tricked Sky tech staff into sharing details of other Sky users from a rival gang and passed it on to his “brothers” — who hunted down and murdered them. Learn more about the brutal exploits of the Principi, how they used Sky, and their links to senior police officials in our new YouTube documentary ([link removed]) .


** In the Newsroom
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Sky phones have long been known in the Balkans as enablers of serious crime, but Sky has argued that it was just a tech tool like any other messenger app, and that the company could not be responsible for a few end users who abused the technology.

So the Crime Messenger series breaks important new ground for Serbians by finally revealing details of how the company was set up, according to Bojana Jovanović.

Jovanović is a longtime editor with OCCRP’s Serbian member center KRIK, a small, close-knit newsroom based in Belgrade that produces deeply researched investigations into the ties between organized crime and the Serbian state. With the new revelations of this week’s investigation, Jovanović said, reporters now have more evidence “that Sky was built for criminals, for organized crime.” Its features were especially appealing to the brutal organized crime groups that have run rampant in Serbia for years, the Kavač and Škaljari — deadly rivals that each had their own Sky phone dealer, according to trial testimony from a former gang member who sold the phones.

KRIK was OCCRP’s partner in producing the Crime Messenger series. The Serbian outlet simultaneously released a story on Sky in Serbian ([link removed]) for a local audience. Jovanović said the entire newsroom agreed to credit the reporters in reverse order of seniority, with the youngest receiving the top bylines. They also referred media inquiries to their three youngest reporters to elevate their contribution and give them exposure.

“It’s important to support young journalists to show them that you trust them,” said Jovanović. “At KRIK, we’re proud that we have a young team and young journalists working so passionately on big things and important things.”

As the youngest reporter in the newsroom, Sofija Bogosavlijev, 23, received top billing on the investigation. Sofija joined KRIK this past winter, and the Sky project was her first big international project — something she found both stressful and exhilarating. A highlight was a series of trips to Čačak in Central Serbia to locate and interview Saša Vasilijević, a top reseller of Sky phones in the Balkans. Interviews like this, even if they just end up as a few sentences in a longform story, provide the human details that help readers understand the bigger picture, she said.

“Since I’ve been at KRIK, I’ve seen just how powerful and how important journalism is,” Bogosavlijev said. “We know that we’re probably not going to change anything now, but the most important thing for me — I love to think this way — is that when the truth has been written and recorded, one day it will be fully uncovered.”

Jovanović said she expects many more revelations to emerge from the secret world of Sky phones, since reporters still have access to just a sliver of the decrypted messages police retrieved.

Explore the Investigation:
* Read OCCRP’s main investigation into Sky Global and its distribution system ([link removed]) .
* Member center KRIK also released its own investigation ([link removed]) .
* See firsthand how Balkan criminals plotted murders and other crimes ([link removed]) using Sky phones.
* Explore an interactive map ([link removed]) marking where law enforcement cracked some of the most prominent cases of drug trafficking and organized crime using decrypted messages.
* Watch our breakdown of the Principi case ([link removed]) on YouTube.

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** More From OCCRP
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** Mining Cement in Misery: The Human Cost of Paraguay’s Construction Boom
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At the Vallemí quarries in Paraguay, working conditions are dire ([link removed]) . It’s common to see child laborers and grandparents side by side, mining limestone for ingredients to make cement. They work long hours and wrap their mouths and noses with rags to avoid inhaling dust. They have no medical insurance or social security and often suffer from respiratory problems.

What’s more, they barely make a profit. Instead, these workers — who are technically freelancers — pay a fee for every ton they mine to the National Cement Industry, one of the country’s largest state companies and cement producers, which owns the quarries.

A recent story by El Surti and OCCRP documents worker reports that conditions have plummeted since 2014, even as the country’s booming economy has increased demand at the quarries — and generated wealth for its beneficiaries. Many workers reported being in debt and poor health, without access to proper medical care. Meanwhile, representatives of the state company say it, too, is struggling to make ends meet, and that it isn’t obligated to monitor the working conditions in its mines.


** Read the full story ([link removed])
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** Fraud Convictions Didn’t Stop This Lawyer From Building a Bustling Practice in Cyprus
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The Cyprus Bar Association is weighing whether to revoke the license of U.K.-born Christos Christodoulides ([link removed]) , who twice used his position as a lawyer to provide fraudulent visa documents to people trying to access the E.U.

Christodoulides fled the U.K. to Cyprus while on day release from a seven-year prison sentence for his first visa fraud program, in which he forged at least 600 applications for visas to the U.K. — which was still part of the EU — for up to $4,650 each. The scheme led to the resignation of Britain’s Home Office Minister, who had reportedly been warned that her office was approving fraudulent visas.

While the U.K. made efforts to extradite Christodoulides, his illicit business ventures continued thriving in Cyprus — until recently. Now, using leaked documents and interviews, OCCRP and its Cypriot member center CIReN have pieced together his history of fraud.


** Read the full story ([link removed])
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** As Bribery Probe Unfolded, Airbus Kept in Touch With Middleman on Controversial Kuwait Helicopters Deal
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Back in 2020, Airbus paid a record $3.9 billion to avoid prosecution over allegations it had used middlemen to bribe clients around the world. The deal followed years of investigations in France, the U.K., and the U.S. that had brought the European aerospace giant’s relationships with intermediaries under scrutiny.

Even as those probes unfolded, senior Airbus executives were keeping in touch with a middleman on controversial Kuwait helicopters contracts — in some cases even suggesting the company was still ready to pay his invoices, OCCRP and its partner Revue XXI found ([link removed]) . An arbitration body later cited the correspondence as evidence the company had carried out “business as usual” with the middleman throughout 2015 and 2016, well after the investigations had begun.

The Kuwait contracts do not appear to have been included in the bribery probes, but a Kuwaiti parliamentary committee launched its own investigation into one of the contracts. It published its findings in January, accusing Airbus of “fraud and deception” in its handling of the deal. Airbus declined to comment on the story.


** Read the full story ([link removed])
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** OCCRP Events and Press
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Join OCCRP this Wednesday, October 30, at the African Investigative Journalism Conference in South Africa. Convened by OCCRP Africa Editor Beauregard Tromp, it will mark the largest gathering of investigative reporters across the continent and offer a space for journalists to network and share stories and ideas. OCCRP staff and member center journalists will lead sessions including "Russia in Africa" and "Newsroom Collaboration to Tackle Climate Change Stories." See the program and register here ([link removed]) .

In a recent webinar for the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), OCCRP Chief Data Editor Jan Strozyk joined industry experts to provide insights into the intricate world of shell companies and strategies for how to report on them. Strozyk gave tips on harnessing the power of unexpected sources of data, like aircraft registries, which can be used to help establish proof of ownership. Watch the full webinar, “Follow the Money: Investigating Shell Companies ([link removed]) .”

Earlier this week, Roman Anin, the founder of independent media site IStories, also spoke with GIJN ([link removed]) about moving his entire newsroom abroad for security reasons and the challenges of reporting on Putin’s repressive regime from outside the country.

Plus, at the 2024 International Journalism Forum in Athens last month, OCCRP co-founder Paul Radu sat down with iMEdD ([link removed]) to discuss how to tackle cross-border organized crime using big data and a strong network. He also provided his take on how to share investigative tools with the public while still upholding journalistic standards.

P.S. Thanks for reading the OCCRP newsletter. Feel free to reply to this email with feedback, thoughts, or questions.

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