France seeks extradition of another Canadian in EncroChat case
A 38-year-old Canadian was arrested on 9 July in Zug after France requested his extradition. He is alleged to have served as technical director of the encrypted phone service EncroChat.
Canadian held in Zug on EncroChat suspicion
A 38-year-old Canadian has been held in pre-trial detention in Zug since 9 July after France filed an extradition request with Switzerland. This emerges from a recent Swiss court decision reported by The Globe and Mail. The man is said to have been involved in the operation of EncroChat, an encrypted phone service that was used by organised crime groups across Europe to evade police surveillance.
French authorities accuse the man, referred to only as "A" in court documents, of having operated EncroChat despite knowing that the devices were primarily being used to coordinate illegal activities. According to French prosecutors, EncroChat was used for drug trafficking, weapons dealing and money laundering, among other things.
According to the court decision, the accused has lived in Zug since 2019 together with his Swiss wife and their child. The details in the judgment issued on 14 August and written in German match the known data of Canadian Seiji Godo, who lives in Zug and operates a business there, as shown by commercial register extracts. French authorities have previously identified Godo as technical director of EncroChat.
His Paris lawyer Thierry Marembert told The Globe and Mail that his client categorically denies the allegations and is confident that he will be acquitted in due course. When asked again on Friday, Marembert said he had nothing to add to his earlier statement.
Flight risk: court rejects release from detention
The accused applied for release from detention under alternative conditions, such as house arrest with an electronic ankle monitor. His Zurich lawyer Mark Livschitz, who specialises in economic criminal law, argued that his client posed no flight risk. The court disagreed with this assessment: "There is a high flight risk," the decision states. This is justified on the basis of the man's relatively young age, his family ties in Canada, and the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence in France in the event of conviction. The court rejected the appeal in full. Livschitz did not respond to questions from The Globe and Mail.
Second Canadian already detained in France
Should extradition be carried out, the man would be the second Canadian whom France has taken into custody in connection with EncroChat. Canadian Paul Krusky is already in detention in France. Krusky, a reserved-demeanoured technology entrepreneur from Guelph, Ontario, lived in the Dominican Republic before his extradition earlier this year. French prosecutors describe him as chief executive officer and key decision-maker of EncroChat and accuse him of having facilitated organised crime through the service. His lawyer Antoine Vey stated that Krusky denies the allegations, which have not yet been proven in court.
EncroChat: Ultra-secure devices for around 60,000 users
EncroChat distributed hardened Android smartphones via a dealer network in Canada and Europe at a price of around 1,000 euros per device. A six-month subscription cost an additional 1,500 euros. The phones looked like standard commercial devices from the outside but had a separate, encrypted operating system that could be activated using a password. Messages between EncroChat users were end-to-end encrypted and could be configured to delete themselves after a certain length of time. GPS functions were disabled, and a so-called panic deletion function allowed users to completely wipe the device's contents by entering a code. Before being shut down, the service had around 60,000 active users.
The Gendarmerie Nationale began investigations into EncroChat in 2017. By 2020, French authorities had infiltrated the company's servers in Roubaix in northern France. The resulting investigation has so far led to more than 6,500 arrests and the seizure of substantial quantities of drugs and cash.
France pursues technology executives consistently
The extradition request to Switzerland fits into a broader strategy by French authorities to hold technology executives personally accountable for illegal activities on their platforms. Last month, French police arrested Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire founder of the Telegram messaging service, on suspicion of complicity in illegal activities on his platform. Additionally, France indicted 30 further individuals in August in connection with the encrypted messenger service Sky ECC, according to Agence France-Presse, which was founded by Vancouver-based company Sky Global and was prevalent among drug dealers.
Seiji Godo, who is credited with a long background as a technology entrepreneur specialising in data protection and encryption, is listed in commercial register extracts as director of Binary IO Solutions Inc., a technology consulting company registered in Vancouver in 2011. On an archived version of the company website it stated: "We highly value discretion and client confidentiality by providing secure communications whenever desirable." Co-director of the company is Benjamin Haigh, who told The Globe and Mail in July that he had been involved for a limited time as a web developer in a partial section of the EncroChat system. Haigh did not respond to a follow-up inquiry.
Source: The Globe and Mail