Interventions on the electricity network: fines for four former RTE employees

Four former employees of RTE, the manager of high-voltage lines in France, were fined Tuesday, March 28, 2023, between 5,000 and 10,000 euros for fraudulent interventions on the power grid duringa strike in June-July 2022. The four agents, aged between 32 and 36, admitted to having programmed the interruption of the “telecontrol” on 25 electrical substations in the Hauts-de-France. This action was carried out within the framework of a social conflict on the wages within the company. The outages prevented visibility and remote manipulation of these stations for anywhere from a few hours to a day.

The investigation was opened following a complaint from RTE, and the employees were taken into custody in October 2022. They were then referred to court for cybercrime offenses. The court found the four defendants guilty of interfering with the operation of an automated data processing system, but acquitted them of modifying such a system and fraudulently introducing data.

The prosecution had requested six to eight months’ suspended prison sentence and a fine of 7,000 euros, but the court chose lower penalties, not entering the fines in the defendants’ criminal records. The court also annulled some of the acts of investigation, such as the wiretapping of the employees and their detention for an exceptional period of 96 hours, because they had been authorized on the basis of suspicions of “sabotage”, whereas the hypothesis of a “union action” had been quickly confirmed.

Defense lawyers reacted to the court’s decision, some expressing satisfaction while others regretted that the court did not opt for a dispensation of sentence. Loïc Le Quellec, lawyer for one of the employees, said that “the message of the court is very clear: there was an instrumentalization of these derogatory measures for the purpose of repression of the trade union movement. Mr. Jérôme Karsenti, lawyer for another defendant, considered that the court had remained “halfway, without going to the end of its own reasoning”.

This case highlights the issues surrounding social conflicts in the energy sector and cybercrime. The sanctions imposed on former RTE employees for their militant action have given rise to debates about the proportionality of penalties and the use of derogatory measures in investigations related to union movements.