A WORLD-leading crime fighter last night saluted the Scots cops who took down cocaine-in-banana-boxes mobster Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson.
Stephen Kavanagh, Interpol’s executive director of police services, described the complex investigation that led to the country’s most powerful gang boss being jailed for 20 years as “outstanding”.
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Stevenson’s £100million racket attempted to flood Scotland with coke in shipments from Ecuador.
It was smashed when French and Dutch officers cracked the encrypted EncroChat phone system he and his cronies used.
Ahead of a global gathering of force chiefs from 196 countries for an organised crime summit in Glasgow today, Mr Kavanagh praised how Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency pieced together the cast-iron case against the hood, 58.
He said: “The work done was just outstanding.
“Stevenson would have been communicating through intermediaries into Ecuador and other locations. He’d have flown there.
“He’d have had financial movements — whether that’s through cryptocurrencies or other elements.
The work done was just outstanding… if you seize the assets, if you go after assets in other countries, then you really dismantle the network
Stephen Kavanagh,
“He would have paid for containers and had other banana shipments over years.
“But if you disrupt that business model, if you seize the assets, if you go after assets in other countries, then you really dismantle the network.
“And that is what Interpol is increasingly committed to doing.”
Mr Kavanagh, a former Essex Police chief constable, has headed Interpol’s global crime programmes since 2020.
He is attending the crime-fighting organisation’s 92nd General Assembly at Glasgow’s Scottish Event Campus with top brass from across the world.
The four-day summit will have a particular Scottish flavour, as an official Interpol Tartan will be unveiled.
Mr Kavanagh said: “The event being in Glasgow is enormously important, as it says the UK is famous for the quality of its policing.
ENCROCHAT EXPLAINED
BY GRAHAM MANN
THE Encrochat network favoured by criminals was one of the largest encrypted communications services in the world.
Around 60,000 people across Europe used it, with around 10,000 of those users being from the UK.
Mystery continues to surround the people who made and supplied the handsets to hoods eager to keep their activities off the radar.
But the users came unstuck when French law enforcement cracked the system using software they have kept a closely guarded secret.
We told last week how a leading crimebuster said the takedown of Encrochat phones gave Scots cops the upper hand – and “turbo-boosted” their fight against gangsters.
Miles Bonfield, deputy director of the National Crime Agency, hailed the impact of Operation Venetic, a hi-tech blitz that unearthed the activities of hundreds of hoods.
He said: “It made a real difference to turbo-boosting some investigations that were already running and giving them the vital insight and evidential assistance they needed to prove their heinous criminality.”
A digital forensics expert told The Iceman’s trial the vast data haul gathered from an EncroChat sting was “the most information ever seen” in any single Police Scotland probe.
Detective Constable Paul Graham revealed the scale of the messages harvested by French and Dutch authorities as he gave evidence at the High Court in Glasgow.
The info gathered from the encrypted devices formed a key part of Operation Pepperoni which ultimately triggered the downfall of Stevenson and his gang.
The 46-year-old told jurors he has been part of Police Scotland’s Cyber Crime Unit for a decade and has 24 years’ experience in the force.
He was asked by Advocate Depute Alex Prentice KC about how the force managed the haul provided via Europol and the National Crime Agency (NCA) after French law enforcement infiltrated the encrypted device network in 2020.
He said: “It was the most information in any single inquiry Police Scotland has ever seen.
“We had to find a way to get that into the system to be able to search by the appropriate means”.
“Having it here sends a clear message that we should be involved.
“We should help make sure the organisation keeps on a straight road to the future.
“Because when we do that, the likes of Jamie Stevenson know there is no safe place for them.
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“You know your enforcement becomes something to be respected and feared rather than just ignored.
“It’s more important today than it has ever been in the history of policing.”
