Spanish police ‘systematically’ hid cryptophone intercepts from courts, claims ex chief

Encrypted phone messages concealed from judges

 Sánchez Gil, who previously worked in the Organised Crime and Drug Enforcement Unit (Udyco) said in video testimony that it was a “common and systematic practice” to maintain “absolute secrecy” about intelligence obtained through encrypted telephone networks.

Investigations and “relevant messages” would be concealed from judges and not included in police databases. In one case Sánchez Gil was involved in an operation to smuggle 1,600 kg of cocaine that were seized in Algeciras in May 2001.

He told Judge Francisco de Jorge, that information that led to the seizure was obtained from encrypted messages from the Anom encrypted phone network. Commanders concealed the role of Anom, by attributing the seizure to a tip-off from the Columbian Anti-Narcotics Directorate (Diran), which co-operated to create a fictitious intelligence report.

Police informers and collaborators protected

He said that when he was in the Anti Drug Unit, all information from encrypted phones that could implicate police informants or identify police that were collaborating with drug traffickers was “systematically concealed”.

Police officers from the Drugs and Organized Crime Unit, and Civil Guard and Customs Officers were among those protected.

He said that encrypted chat logs used in the case against him contained references to members of security forces but the information had not been analysed and had not been included by investigators in their reports to the judge.

In one case Police obtained information from the Sky ECC encrypted phone network that linked a drugs trafficker to a network under investigation. “They chose to conceal the source of the data and fabricated a report,” he said. The move was hidden from the prosecutors.

The former head of Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit, also claims that police installed a trojan on his mobile phone, which had been used to intercept messages sent on Signal, without proper judicial authorisation.

Sánchez Gil faces charges

Sánchez Gil, who was arrested in November 2023, is accused of supporting drug trafficking gangs from his position as head of the UDEF.

He is accused of opening fictitious investigations in police databases by entering the licence plate numbers of shipping containers that were about to enter shipping ports concealing drugs.

If another officer entered the same container number because they were genuinely investigating it, it would be flagged to Sánchez Gil who would alert the drug traffickers.

Impact on fair trials

Commenting on the case, defence lawyer, María Barbancho, said that if Sánchez Gil’s allegations were correct, it would have wider implications.

“It means the tribunal and the defence are working from a curated file — a record from which exculpatory material, and material inconvenient to the investigators, has been removed before anyone independent is able to examine it,” she wrote in a blog post.

Barbancho said the allegations raise questions about the right of people to have a fair trial, which requires defendants to be able to examine how evidence was produced.

“A police report whose stated origin is fabricated defeats that right at the very first step. A court cannot assess the lawfulness of an interception it has been told never happened,” she added.

Defence lawyers have challenged the use of intercepted evidence from networks including Sky ECC in prosecutions in Europe. The Court of Appeal of Basel-Stadt in Switzerland held in May that evidence from Sky ECC failed four grounds of legal admissibility.