Basel excludes Sky ECC chats but upholds lengthy drug sentence
Basel-Stadt’s Court of Appeal ruled Sky ECC data inadmissible in a drug-trafficking and money-laundering case. Its decision of 3 October 2025 was published on 24 April 2026. The official register records an appeal to Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court.
Both the defendant and prosecutors appealed against a January 2023 judgment. In case SB.2023.48, the court separately examined whether chats supplied by France could be used. It accepted the defence argument that decryption involved interference with a phone in Switzerland without France first securing Swiss consent through mutual legal assistance.
The court also identified an absence of sufficient individualised suspicion behind the broad interception. Neither the defence nor the judges could check how the supplied messages had been selected: they had processed data rather than all the original information and potentially exculpatory conversations. The court excluded the Sky ECC material.
Relying on other evidence, the court sentenced the man to ten years and nine months for serious drug offences and money laundering.
