DM168 GLOBAL DRUG BUST: No business like blow business: Encrypted devices unravel knots of worldwide organised crime

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A multimillion-rand cocaine crackdown in SA is linked to high-level investigations in the US and Australia involving multinational criminals and encrypted communication devices.

In less than three months, investigators in South Africa have made massive inroads into the global drug trade, intercepting more than R1-billion worth of cocaine , arresting several suspects and identifying international operatives in this country.

A map showing where these devices were used, contained in US documents, includes South Africa, and authorities here have acknowledged US and Australian investigations fed into a major cocaine bust in this country. “Hardened encrypted devices usually provide an impenetrable shield against law enforcement surveillance and detection. The supreme irony here is that the very devices that these criminals were using to hide from law enforcement were actually beacons for law enforcement.”

Rasheed Baderoen, Norman and Van Zyl were previously co-accused and convicted in a perlemoen smuggling case . Police are still searching for three suspects in connection with the ski-boat case. Arrest warrants have been issued for two of them. One, from Israel, known by names including Ahmad Isa, Pardilov Ariel and Micky Paki, was last seen in Camps Bay, Cape Town, on 12 June when he managed to escape arrest. According to the Hawks, he is also wanted in Antwerp, Belgium, on cocaine dealing and money laundering charges and “is possibly armed … and dangerous”.

Asked how South Africa fit into Operation Trojan Shield, another Hawks spokesperson, Katlego Mogale, toldIt reportedly emerged in court this week that those arrested in the ski-boat cocaine bust were allegedly linked via FBI devices.An affidavit dated mid-May 2021 by Nicholas Cheviron, a special agent with the FBI, said investigators started looking into a company based in Canada, Phantom Secure, about four years ago.

“At the time, the void created by Phantom Secure’s dismantlement provided a new opportunity for criminal users to switch to a new, secure brand of device,” Cheviron said in his affidavit. Cheviron said that, since October 2019, the FBI had translated “and have catalogued more than 20 million messages from a total of 11,800 devices located in over 90 countries”.

Anom’s web domain appears to have been seized and says: “Law enforcement has been monitoring messages and attachments from the ANØM platform. A number of investigations have been initiated and are ongoing.”Three years ago, the Australian Federal Police launched an offshoot investigation from the FBI one, codenamed Operation Ironside.

 

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US did not supply any trojan horse instruments to them. Nsa simply bugged their phones/laptops

Cant wait to hear how many Nigerians who stay in South Africa, and politicians protecting them are involved...

Linked to WMC I guess

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