Dutch and French police have taken down a new sophisticated encrypted messaging service known as Matrix, after monitoring messages from potential criminals over the past three months.

The evidence gained via the monitoring will be used to back up other investigations, Europol, which supported the investigation, said in a statement on Wednesday.

In total, the police had access to 2.3 million messages in 33 languages. Most of the messages related to drugs, money laundering and arms trading, Europol said.
The network had some 8,000 users who paid between €1300 and €1600 for a six-month subscription.

Matrix was discovered by Dutch police who were looking into the phone of one of the people convicted of murdering journalist Peter R de Vries in 2021. That finding triggered the mass investigation.

“It was soon clear that the infrastructure of this platform was technically more complex than previous platforms such as Sky ECC and EncroChat,” Europol said.

“The founders were convinced that the service was superior and more secure than previous applications used by criminals. Users were only able to join the service if they received an invitation.”

The service, with its main servers in France and Germany, was taken down on Tuesday. In France, one suspect was arrested, and his house was searched. In Spain, two suspects were arrested following a European arrest warrant from the Netherlands, and six houses were searched. Six houses were also searched in Lithuania.