European law enforcement has blocked the Matrix encrypted messaging platform, which it described as “a tool created by criminals for criminals.” About this reported European Police Directorate (Europol).
The platform was discovered during an investigation when Dutch police gained access to the phone of a criminal convicted of murdering a Dutch journalist in 2021. According to investigators, Matrix was used to organize large-scale criminal operations, including international drug, arms and money laundering.
The peculiarity of this platform was its complex infrastructure: it had 40 servers in different countries, in particular in France and Germany. During the three-month surveillance, law enforcement officers intercepted more than two million messages in 33 languages.
With the support of Eurojust and other European institutions, Europol organized an operation to eliminate this platform. After it was blocked, the collected data became the basis for criminal investigations, which led to arrests in France and Spain, as well as large-scale searches in the Netherlands and Lithuania.
