Is SKY ECC Evidence Valid in Spain? Valencia Court Analysis

In Spain, drug trafficking is not a marginal phenomenon. In 2024 alone, 29,758 proceedings for drug trafficking were initiated in territorial prosecutor’s offices (a +23.21% increase from 2023). That same year, 29,693 arrests for drug trafficking were recorded.

With this volume, it is logical that every evidentiary detail counts. And today, investigations based on encrypted messages (SKY ECC) are at the center of the debate: can those messages be used to convict… if the defense cannot verify the digital «original»?

The Valencia Provincial Court of January 21, 2026 focuses on the essential: without access to «raw data» and without sufficient technical traceability, the court may not evaluate SKY ECC evidence or consider it insufficient to overcome the presumption of innocence.

What relationship does SKY ECC have with drug trafficking offenses in Spain?

In practice, most proceedings involving SKY ECC end up connecting with crimes against public health (drug trafficking). The basic offense is found in art. 368 CP.

What happens if my defense cannot access SKY ECC raw data?

When the defense cannot access the original material, it cannot audit the technical process by which those messages reach the Spanish criminal proceedings.

And this is not a theoretical issue. It is a direct evidentiary problem.

Without access to the source:

• the defense cannot reconstruct the data’s path,
• cannot verify how it has been processed,
• nor can it check whether what reaches the trial is faithful to what was initially obtained.

Excel files versus original digital evidence: PCAP and JSON

The Court expressly acknowledges the defense’s expert allegation:
the «raw» files from SKY ECC were not Excel spreadsheets, but technical files in formats such as:

• PCAP, which would contain encrypted communications in network packets,

• and JSON, which would reflect the messages once decrypted by authorities.

However, what was sent through the OEI were Excel files and multimedia annexes, the result of police analysis and filtering in France.

It

So, why doesn’t the court declare SKY ECC evidence null?

Because it doesn’t need to.

The Court takes a more precise step—and much more difficult to challenge on appeal—:
it states that, under those conditions, the digital evidence lacks the ability to overcome the presumption of innocence.

It doesn’t exclude the evidence.
It neutralizes it.

What does this mean for a person under investigation for drug trafficking with SKY ECC?

In simple terms, this means that the case is not decided at the European level, but in the Spanish criminal trial. Even when the court accepts that international cooperation has been correct and that SKY ECC information can be incorporated into the proceedings, the prosecution is still obligated to meet a very demanding evidentiary standard.

That standard requires real adversarial testing, which allows the defense to examine how the data was obtained, how it was processed and whether it has been preserved intact; equality of arms, preventing the prosecution from having an insurmountable technical advantage; and effective technical verification, essential in complex digital evidence. It is not enough to trust the final result: its reliability must be verifiable.

This approach is not isolated. The Berlin Regional Court, in the EncroChat cases, went even further and excluded the evidence