The war between the management of the Electric Transport Network (RTE) and the CGT becomes a matter of State. Its secretary general, Philippe Martinez, sent a scathing letter on December 7 to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, as well as the Ministers of Justice, Interior and Energy Transition. In the letter obtained by BFM Business, he denounces the “orchestrated machination” by the RTE management during the arrest of four employees by the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI).
On Tuesday, October 4, four company agents were arrested in Hauts-de-France, early in the morning, by the police, and were placed in police custody for three days at the DGSI premises in Levallois. At the end of July, his company RTE had filed a complaint in Lille against X for “serious malicious acts”, estimates the management. During the strikes in June and July, these four employees intervened in the electrical network. Using computers, they had simultaneously prevented the piloting of fourteen local networks nationwide. So much so that for several hours RTE was no longer able to act on it from its central post in Paris. The four employees will be tried on February 28 for “obstruction”, “sabotage” and “fraudulent access” to the computer system. They face up to 15 years in prison.
Intervention of RTE management with the DGSI
Philippe Martinez accuses the RTE management of intervening before the DGSI. “The minutes show that the RTE security director directly seized the DGSI”, he explains to Elisabeth Borne. The general secretary of the CGT then charges the president of RTE, whom he accuses of having “lied about his involvement in the police and judicial suites.” He cites a letter to the RTE administrators, signed by Xavier Piechaczyck who writes that “the prosecutor, and he alone, decided to seize the specialized cybercrime section that he later designated the internal security directorate.”
In this letter dated November 2, to which we had access, the president of RTE underlines in bold that the Public Ministry “and only he” “grabbed” the DGSI. Words are important and nuances too. RTE acknowledges having “informed” the intelligence services as it has done in the past for serious events. But management adds that “RTE does not interfere with your work in any way.” In this way, he responds to the letters from the salaried managers of RTE who made these accusations on social networks.
The CGT denounces the brutal management of RTE
The police reports from the DGSI, which has been obtained by BFM Business, are clear. On July 29, 2022, it is written that “the service was contacted by the security director of the RTE group, Marc Betton, who wanted to inform us of the events that impacted his computer system.” This former gendarme, on vacation at the end of July, later provided the contact details of RTE’s central security officer, Philippe Le Falher. It was he who filed a complaint with the Lille police. On August 2 and 4, he informed the DGSI “about the progress of his internal investigation.” Contacted, the interested party refused to answer our questions, judging that “RTE does not rule on an ongoing legal case.”
But the act goes further and feeds the thesis of the CGT that believes that “the RTE management has handed over the four employees”, according to its manager Francis Casanova. The DGSI policeman who received the complaint writes that “at the request of RTE’s senior management, a request was sent to him, in order for them to communicate personal data to us.” It was then the deputy prosecutor of Paris, Johanna Brousse, who seized the DGSI according to these documents. This pushes the general secretary of the CGT to question Elisabeth Borne about “the role of the government in the decision to strip the prosecutor’s office and the Lille police station.”
This highly sensitive file illustrates the frontal opposition between the CGT and the president of RTE since his arrival at the head of the company, in the summer of 2020. Philippe Martínez also denounces “the brutal and deleterious management face to face -vis staff representatives” and calls on the government to “review the governance” of the public company, 50% owned by EDF and 50% by the Caisse des Dépôts group.
Source: BFM TV
