Berlin — European investigators have shut down an encrypted communications service that was used as a secure channel for organized crime, particularly in the drug trade, and arrested 48 people, German authorities said Monday.

More than 70 properties in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland were searched on Friday when the arrests were made, the criminal police office in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate said in a statement.

It said that the people arrested were users, operators and administrators of the communication service.

The arrests resulted from an investigation launched in 2020, which originated the previous year in the closure of a former military bunker in West Germany that hosted sites for drugs and other illegal activity. Excluded from it.

German authorities said Exlude was offered to users as a smartphone app, with a six-month license costing 800 euros ($860). It had approximately 3,000 users – 750 of them in the Netherlands, where police were also involved in the investigation.