The four employees aged 31 to 35 were taken into custody on Tuesday at the premises of the General Directorate of Homeland Security.
Article written by
Posted
Reading time : 1 min.
Four RTE employees will be tried on February 28, 2023 in Paris for suspicion of fraudulent interventions on the electricity network last June and July, which had triggered a complaint from the manager of the electricity transmission network in France. The Paris prosecutor’s office on Friday, October 7 handed these four RTE employees who had been in police custody since Tuesday at the premises of the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) a summons for a trial before the Paris Criminal Court on February 28.
They will be tried for “obstructing the operation of an automated data processing system”, “fraudulent modification” of such a system and “introduction of fraudulent data” into it. The four employees, aged 31 to 35, were interviewed in the premises of the DGSI because RTE is an operator of vital importance for the functioning of the country.
RTE filed a complaint this summer following damage which would have led to power cuts, a source familiar with the matter told AFP. The investigation was opened on July 29 for obstructing a data processing system, computer sabotage, fraudulent access and maintenance in an automated data processing system, as well as for entering, modifying and deleting data from such a system. .
In a note to employees consulted by AFP on Wednesday, RTE management does not mention any degradation but, three times in June and July, a “loss of telecontrol”that is to say that substations have been made unavailable to be seen and operated from a distance, for example to be switched off, which has “put the safety of the electrical system at significant risk”. Pending the hearing, the Paris prosecutor’s office requested the placement of the four employees under judicial supervision.