Wave of arrests and millions of pounds worth of drugs seized in East in huge police operation
Police forces across the region have smashed thousands of criminal plans and seized millions of pounds of drugs after infiltrating an encrypted communication network- in one of the UK’s biggest ever police operations.
More than £21 million worth of Class A drugs and £1.85 million in cash were seized in Essex alone.
It all centres around an encrypted mobile phone network called Encrochat, which police say had become the go-to method of communication in the underworld.
EncroChat offered a secure mobile phone instant messaging service with 60,000 users worldwide and around 10,000 in the UK.
The primary use was for co-ordinating and planning criminal activities including the distribution of illicit commodities and money laundering.
Since 2016, the NCA has worked with international law enforcement agencies to target EncroChat, and other encrypted criminal communications platforms, and two months ago agencies in France and the Netherlands infiltrated the platform.Some of this intelligence involved the sale of Class A drugs in Essex.
Essex Police found 138kg of cocaine and 8kg of heroin, with a combined street value of £20 million, in a lorry at the Port of Harwich on 1 June.
A 43 year-old man, Marcin Jadasz from Prudnik in Poland, was arrested and has since been charged with two counts of importing a Class A drug with intent to evade a prohibition or restriction.
During another operation drugs and £80,000 in cash were discovered when officers executed a warrant in Hullbridge on 23 May. Three men were subsequently arrested.Three other people have been charged in connection with another investigation when police stopped a vehicle on the A13 at the junction with the M25 on 13 May and discovered £750,000 in cash inside.A further £750,000 in cash and 5kg of cocaine, with a street value of £500,000, was discovered when officers carried out a warrant in Basildon on 29 May. A man and a woman were arrested.
Nationally over £54 million in cash has been seized.