The film “Crime Code” revealed how the Sky ECC app, which attracted 300,000 users with its high-grade encryption services, became a tool that enabled European law enforcement agencies to intercept nearly 1 billion messages. According to the film, the operation helped prevent 114 murders and seize 121 tonnes of various drugs.
Al Jazeera aired the film on Friday evening, 7 August 2026, as part of its “Licensed Films” series. It traced the rise of the company founded by Jan Eib in 2013, the use of its services by criminal networks, and the eventual hacking of the app, as well as the controversy the case sparked over the limits of digital privacy and the responsibility of encryption companies.
An encrypted app attracts criminal networks
Eib founded the company after working as an authorised distributor for the Canadian company Rogers in Vancouver and earning his first $1 million. It was launched amid concerns raised by Edward Snowden’s leaks about the penetration of communications by the US intelligence agency.
The Sky ECC app offered its services for €200, or approximately $217, per month. Its features included disabling Bluetooth and the facial-recognition camera, using a secret code to erase content, and a camouflage screen that appeared as a calculator.
Former US prosecutor Andrew Young said in the film that Eib’s father was the company’s technical mastermind, while Jan handled the business side. He added that the app effectively allowed users to own their data, and that the company stated on its website that it could not access their messages or hand their contents over to the authorities, boosting criminals’ confidence in the service.
An 18-month hack
Former Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle, meanwhile, criticised companies that ignore the criminal use of their tools. She explained that the discovery of Sky ECC servers in France allowed the French judiciary to issue an order to monitor them, launching a hacking operation led by Europol.
The process of decrypting the messages took 18 months, after which security agencies were able to monitor criminals’ communications in real time. According to De Bolle, the operation helped thwart 114 murders and seize 16 tonnes of cocaine, in what the film described as the largest operation in Europe’s history. The total amount of drugs seized reached 121 tonnes.
The Principi gang and the “House of Horrors”
The film also highlighted the use of the Sky network in Serbia. Bojana Jovanovic, a journalist with the Serbian Crime and Corruption Reporting Network, said that a dealer named Sragan Lalich supplied 1,000 phones to the Principi gang.
The film portrayed the gang as one of the most dangerous and bloodiest organised-crime groups in Serbia and the Balkans, noting that it began as an association of hardcore supporters of Partizan Belgrade. It also linked the gang to what became known as the “House of Horrors” in Belgrade, a house where seven murders took place, documented in photographs exchanged by criminals through the app.
Anom and the privacy debate
The film also examined the fake encrypted Anom app, developed by the FBI in 2018 and promoted among criminals after the closure of the Sky app. The operation led to the arrest of 800 suspects from 16 countries, as well as the seizure of 40 tonnes of drugs and $48 million. But it prompted criticism over the lack of neutrality in dealing with encryption technologies.
Eib, for his part, denied knowing that criminals were using his app and said police had found no evidence proving that he was complicit. He also said that Canada had not carried out any searches at his company’s headquarters since 2021, and that Canadian laws protected him because there was insufficient evidence to prove that he had deliberately deployed the company and the app to serve criminals.
At its conclusion, the film raised the question of balancing the protection of digital privacy with the fight against crime, as the European Union prepares new rules to facilitate the interception of encrypted services, including WhatsApp and Signal, citing the Sky case as a precedent for expanding the scope of surveillance.
