Awarra: EncroChat and Sky ECC evidence used in drug convictions
On 26 June 2026 The Hague District Court sentenced a father and son to six and a half and six years in the Awarra investigation. It used encrypted chats as evidence. It found privacy violations in separate phone and APN inquiries without excluding evidence.
Awarra began with EncroChat and Sky ECC messages from the 26Lemont and Argus investigations. The court linked the accounts to a father and his son using travel records, banking data and the conversations’ contents. It found them involved in selling twenty kilograms of cocaine and preparing further hard-drug trafficking.
The court said the interceptions occurred in France under French responsibility. Dutch technical assistance did not turn them into a Dutch investigation. The Dutch court examined whether using the results respected the right to a fair trial. It found that the defence had sufficient information and opportunities to examine and challenge the data, with no concrete indications of unreliability.
The court did find violations in other data inquiries. Seized phones had been examined without the required prior judicial permission. Historical traffic records and APN data, concerning devices’ network connections, had also been requested without prior independent scrutiny. The court considered the privacy impact limited in this case and found no serious impediment to the defence established. It therefore excluded no evidence.
The father received six years and six months in prison; the son received six years because his proven preparation period was a year shorter. Separate confiscation judgments that day ordered each to pay the state €250,000 in proceeds from the cocaine sale.
