Reported incidents of Organized Crime rose some 17% in Germany over the course of 2021, according to new statistics released by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) but the spike in cases doesn’t necessarily point to a spike in crime but a spike in enforcement thanks to the dismantling of an encrypted messaging service criminals used.

Belgian and Dutch authorities searched on Tuesday more than 200 premises and arrested nearly 50 people after accessing hundreds of millions of messages that were exchanged between suspected criminals through an encrypted messaging network allegedly called Sky ECC.