Italian mafia member arrested in raid over Australia app shutdown

A man with a ‘big role’ in a Italian mafia is one of dozens of suspects arrested in a series of coordinated raids around the world that stemmed from the dismantling of a Australia-based encrypted communication app.

Italian authorities called the arrest of the 43-year-old, who has links to the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia and had been wanted since last year, “fundamental” and expressed hope that this would be just the beginning of similar operations.

According to several international and Australian authorities, disabling the app led to the seizure of millions of dollars worth of drugs, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and the dismantling of an Australian drug lab worldwide.

At least 50 people were saved from death or serious injury by the operation, Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner David McLean said.

“While there are 50 people alive today because of our work, there are another 50 people in Australia, users of the ghost platform, who are now facing criminal charges,” he said.

On Wednesday evening, 51 suspects were arrested as the European police agency Europol teamed up with law enforcement agencies from nine countries, including Australia and the US, to take down the ‘Ghost’ communications app, which criminals used to communicate undetected.

“Criminals thought they could and would hide behind technology to coordinate drug and arms trafficking, extreme violence and money laundering across borders,” Europol Director Catherine De Bolle said at a press conference at its headquarters in The Hague on Wednesday morning (Wednesday evening AEST).

“But today we are making it clear that no matter how advanced the technology, no matter how secure they think their communications are, we will find them and stop their criminal activities.”

Although only one arrest took place in Italy, an Italian law enforcement representative at the same conference described it as “fundamental and very important”.

“The Sacra Corona Unita is one of the mafias that we have in Italy, you know, probably better than others, like the Sicilian mafia, like the Ndrangheta from Calabria and also like the Camorra from Naples,” he said, without introducing himself by name.

“But we are talking about a wanted man, a man who has been wanted since 2023… with a major role in the Sacra Corona Unita, which is in the south of Italy, in the Puglia region, because of its geography, its connection with Albania and this whole area is of fundamental importance for this type of investigation.

“So we hope that this will be just the beginning of a new law enforcement partnership.”

Another Italian official said at a news conference in Italy that the suspect had escaped a pre-trial detention order issued in May 2023 by a Lecce court over suspected links to the mafia and that he was a convicted criminal.

He is said to have forced a local businessman in the Gallipoli region to pay more than €60,000 ($98,500) through severe threats.

According to the AFP, Jung created the Ghost app when he was 23 and sold “special encrypted communication devices” to use the app for about $2,350. New users were vetted before being allowed into the system.

The encryption was described as “a step above” encrypted consumer platforms like WhatsApp and Signal.

According to Interpol, the network used three encryption standards, contained a code to destroy all messages on a target phone and was used by thousands of people worldwide, sending about 1,000 messages a day.

“We will accuse hundreds of criminals, including Italian organised crime, criminal motorcycle gangs, Middle Eastern organised crime and Korean organised crime, of using Ghost in Australia and overseas to import illegal drugs and to order the killings of individuals involved in various criminal enterprises,” AFP’s McLean said at the Europol press conference.

Servers running the network were reportedly found in France and Iceland, and financial assets in the US.

Ghost was described as much smaller than previous encrypted networks popular with criminals, such as EncroChat and Sky ECC.

According to Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, Deputy Executive Director of Europol, the landscape has become “fragmented” since the removal of the larger apps.

“We have several smaller networks that are used by criminals, and sometimes they use two or three,” he said.

“So the size is smaller, but the footprint is global.”

In March 2022, an international task force was established at Europol, consisting of authorities from Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States.

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