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CRIME

Fifteen gang suspects go to trial on Monday in Sweden’s biggest EncroChat case yet

Fifteen Malmö criminals believed that having encrypted EncroChat phones meant they could safely plot the gang executions of rivals. Little did they know that the encryption had been broken.

Fifteen gang suspects go to trial on Monday in Sweden's biggest EncroChat case yet
A memorial lain outside the Galaxy Cyber cafe in Malmö in 2018 after three men were shot dead inside. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

“We need get hold of things and cash for this war,” two men wrote to another on the encrypted chat service as they planned a series of murders in the spring of 2020.

Swedish police were able to follow gang members’ plans to carry out five separate lethal shootings in real-time, making them unwitting participants in one of the biggest coordinated European police operations in history.

Police waited until the last minute before stepping in to prevent the five killings happening, and monitoring the chats has thrown light on nine murders that did take place, and one kidnapping. 

On Monday,  a court case will begin in Malmö against the fifteen criminals charged for their roles in what they themselves described as a war to control the drug trade across the whole of Skåne in southern Sweden. 

In the chat, the men discussed potential hitmen to contact, how much a hitman would cost, and which getaway car should be used.

According to Michael Hansson, a prosecutor with the Swedish police’s international and organised crime unit, police were at points able to follow preparations in real-time.

“In our case, I felt that was what we could do from the middle of May last year,” he told TT. “We would probably have had a murder here instead, if we hadn’t had access to the Encrochat material in real time,” he said.

He estimates that a total of five murders would probably have happened if police had not been able to read gang members’ communications, and then, from the end of the summer last year, begin to arrest some of the suspected participants.

The full trial begins on Monday, and although the 15 men were not in the same gang, they are accused of banding together in a temporary alliance to wage a “war” against a 24-year-old man who is one of Malmö’s most notorious criminals, and the circle around him. 

“They say themselves in some situations that this is an alliance,”  Hansson said, adding that the goal had been to take over the drug trade in Skåne. 

READ ALSO: ‘One of the most extensive strikes ever’: 155 Swedish arrests in global police sting

Nine murders have been connected to the same conflict, including the high-profile shooting of the 31-year-old doctor Karolin Hakim in August 2019, and the triple murder inside an internet café in the summer of 2018. 

In the latter case, police believe the 24-year-old, who was injured in the shooting, had been the true target.

Two years later, the man was arrested in Dubai and extradited to Spain, where he is suspected of another murder.

The investigation document in the case extends to up to 30,000 pages, and the trial is scheduled to take 48 days in court.

One of the biggest challenges for the prosecution will be to prove that the accused are indeed the people behind Encrochat profiles such as kitekiller and knarklangaren.

“It’s the small details that we’re looking,” Hansson told TT. “Someone talks of getting a pair of dogs of a certain race, and then we go to the person’s parents’ house and find two dogs of the exact same race. Someone says that they became a dad the day before, and we can check and see that he did become a dad the day before.” 

According to the Swedish police’s nation unit NOA, the cracking of EncroChat has led to 200 people being suspected of crimes in Sweden, with several cases leading to convictions.

The EncroChat case have faced legal obstacles in Sweden, however, with defence lawyers raising issues over how the cracked material has been obtained and handled. 

“There’s nothing strange about that at all,” Hansson said. “This is surveillance information we’ve received from France and how the French obtained the material is confidential, so we don’t know [how they did it]. But in Sweden, you are free to provide any evidence you want, and then it’s up to the court to weigh up what it should do with it.”

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POLICE

Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

A new report in Dagens Nyheter has revealed over 514 suspected leaks of sensitive information from at least 30 members of the police force to criminals since 2018. Here's what we know so far.

Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

What’s happened?

According to an investigative report by newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), multiple gang members have infiltrated the police force by, for example, dating police employees, or using family connections to gain access to sensitive information about ongoing cases.

The first article in DN’s series focuses on a woman the newspaper calls Elin, who met a man, Jonas (not his real name), on a dating app when she had one year left of her police education. She falls in love, but his only goal with the relationship is to get a source within the police force which he can use for access to secret information.

Over the course of four years until she was caught, she made multiple illegal searches in the police register for Jonas, his associates and enemies, as well as providing him with information on ongoing investigations against him.

Other cases investigated by the newspaper include a border guard who sold classified information to gangs, a police officer who leaked information to what DN describes as “one of Sweden’s most notorious criminals” and an investigator who was dating a man she was investigating, who she shared screenshots of sensitive information with.

In another case, the police received a tip-off that information was being leaked to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. It was discovered that a group of five alarm operators had made an unusually high number of searches for members of the Hells Angels, who were later discovered to have connections with the gang that they had lied about during their background checks.

What have the consequences of these leaks been?

In some cases, the leaks preceded revenge attacks on enemies of the gang member involved in the relationship. In other cases, the gang members’ enemies disappeared or were murdered.

Some of the people from the police force involved in the leaks were sentenced to fines for illegal data access or breaches of professional secrecy, while the evidence against others was not sufficient to prosecute. 

At least 30 employees had for different reasons been considered “security risks” and either resigned or were forced to quit, the newspaper reported, with over 514 suspected leaks taking place from police to criminals since 2018.

How do criminals find police officers?

According to DN, they look for things that can be used as blackmail, like police officers who buy drugs, or set “honey traps”, like the one used against Elin, where they meet police officers or students on dating apps and start a relationship.

“You take Tinder, for example, and set your search radius so the police school is in the centre. When you get a match, it’s easy to check if it’s a student, through class lists or how they present themselves on social media. They’re proud of their line of work,” Jonas told DN.

They might also use their family connections to put pressure on relatives who work in the police force.

Why is this important?

It’s important because Sweden has seen a rise in gang-related violence in recent years, with a surge in shootings and bombings as gangs fight for control over different drug markets.

Swedes also have a high level of trust in the police force – 72 percent according to a 2024 study by Medieakademin, topping the list of state authorities, with a higher level of trust than universities, healthcare, the courts and even the Swedish church. This was five percent higher than in 2023.

Although the vast majority of police officers do not leak information to criminal networks, Sweden does not have a history of organised crime infiltrating the police force, so officials are keeping a close eye on these leaks to make sure they don’t become more common.

On April 29th, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told TT newswire that the leaks were “very serious”, potentially putting trust in the police force at risk.

“There are many great risks and one is that trust in police declines, that people get the idea that mafia-like methods are used to infiltrate law enforcement,” he said, before adding that he was unable to say whether it constituted a threat to national security or not purely based on the initial DN article.

“But the mere suspicion of these types of connections are damaging,” he told the newswire.

What happens now?

Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer told DN that he planned to call a meeting with police leadership about the reports, which he described as “extremely serious”.

“[At that meeting] we will consider the need for further measures,” he said.

“Leaking sensitive information to criminals is against the law and can have very damaging consequences for the work of the police force,” Strömmer told DN, adding that it could undermine trust in the police and “damage democracy”.

Last summer, the government increased the penalty for breaching professional secrecy, and a special investigator was tasked with looking at a potential reform of the rules on corruption and professional misconduct in February – the Crime Prevention Council is also involved in that investigation, where it has been asked to provide information on how gangs use government employees.

“Protecting the integrity of the justice system against infiltration and other security threats is a central part of the new national strategy against organised crime that the government decided on earlier this year, and it is given the highest priority in our assignments to the authorities,” Strömmer told the newspaper.

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