Catching the Kingpins

A 6-part true crime podcast documenting the biggest organised crime bust in British policing history. It happens in 2020 when police in France penetrate an encrypted phone network called EncroChat. According to police, the phones were used exclusively by criminals. For over two months, police forces across Europe were reading the secret communications of major league criminal networks. The Metropolitan Police, working with the National Crime Agency and other forces, used this information to uncover the workings of organised crime groups. “It was like being in a room with them and they are talking freely, and they don't see you there,” says DCI Driss Hayoukane, the Senior Investigating Officer who led the Met’s EncroChat operation. Police went public about the EncroChat hack in July 2020. This is the first time that the inside story of some of the Met’s biggest EncroChat cases has been told to a broadcaster. Talking exclusively to BBC Sounds, police officers reveal how they used the gangsters’ messages to uncover arms dealing and expose murder plots as well as major drug trafficking and money laundering operations.