European investigators have shut down an encrypted communications service that was used as a secure channel for organized crime, particularly in the drug trade, and arrested 48 people, German authorities said on Monday. Did.
More than 70 properties were searched in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland on Friday when the arrests were made, the criminal police office in the west German state of Rhineland-Palatinate said in a statement.
It said those arrested were users, operators and administrators of the communication service, Exlude.
The detentions resulted from an investigation launched in 2020 that had its roots in the previous year’s shutdown of a former military bunker in western Germany that hosted sites dealing in drugs and other illegal activities. These include
German authorities said XClu was offered to users as a smartphone app, with a six-month license costing 800 euros ($860). It had an estimated 3,000 users – 750 of them in the Netherlands, where police were also involved in the investigation.