A Saskatchewan man faces child pornography charges following a globe-spanning operation to shut down Kidflix, one of the largest child sexual exploitation platforms in the world. Saskatchewan’s Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit teamed up with Europol in the investigation, led by the State Criminal Police of Bavaria, and the Bavarian office for the prosecution of cybercrime, the Saskatoon police said in a news release Wednesday. Over 35 countries worldwide participated in the operation, which police say followed a March 11 seizure of a server by German and Dutch authorities that contained around 72,000 videos of child sexual abuse material. Europol says Kidflix was created in 2021 and quickly became a hugely profitable and popular platform among paedophiles. It served a massive audience, the pan-European police agency says. Around 1.8 million people logged on to the platform between April 2022 and March 2025. On average, police say about 3.5 new videos were uploaded every hour to the platform, which allowed users to both stream and download child sexual abuse material. Users made payments using cryptocurrency, which was converted to tokens used to view content. Users could also earn tokens by uploading videos themselves, police say. According to Europol, this is the largest ever investigation by its child sexual exploitation experts. European cybercrime analysts processed over 91,000 videos for evidence in the course of the operation to provide evidence to partners across the globe. “The digital dimension has driven a rapid evolution in online child sexual exploitation, offering offenders a borderless platform to contact and groom victims, as well as to create, store, and exchange child sexual abuse material,” Europol director Catherine De Bolle said in a news release. “Some attempt to frame this as merely a technical or cyber issue — but it is not. There are real victims behind these crimes, and those victims are children. As a society, we must act to protect our children.” Investigators were able to identify almost 1,400 suspects in countries around the world. Seventy-nine have been arrested so far. “Some of those arrested not only uploaded and watched videos but also abused children,” Europol said in a news release. In Saskatchewan, the project — dubbed Operation Stream — led to one arrest. On March 27, ICE investigators executed a search warrant at a Regina residence and arrested 23-year-old Edmund James Bellegarde Jr. Bellegarde faces two charges for accessing and possessing child pornography. He was released on conditions and will appear again in court on May 14 in Regina.
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