Wiretapping, what happens to RCS Lab (which will end up in Elettronica)
Business and numbers of Rcs, controlled by Aurora spa, which is about to be bought by the Electronics group of the Benigni family through Cy4gate
Evolutions and tensions in the companies that handle wiretapping. Here's what's happening at RCS Lab. All the details
Electronics ready to acquire – through Cy4gate – Rcs Lab, the main supplier in Italy of tools for environmental, telephone and telematic wiretapping to prosecutors, law enforcement agencies and services.
On May 4th, the company of the Elettronica group announced that it had started negotiations to acquire Rcs Lab.
Since its establishment in 1993, the Milanese company RCS Etm Sicurezza Spa (owner of the RCS Lab brand) has been producing and renting electronic equipment to support the investigative activities ordered by the Italian judicial authority. To date, the company headed by Alberto Chiappino has a turnover of over 36 million euros and a profit of around 4 million.
The capital of RCS Lab is held by the holding company Aurora, in turn controlled with 81% by the president Marco Chiappini.
But there is a twist for RCS. On May 4, the activities of the company that – on the mandate of the Perugia prosecutor's office – carried out the interception activity with the Trojan against the former councilor of the CSM, Luca Palamara, were suspended by the public prosecutor of Naples, Giovanni Melillo, as the newspaper La Verità had revealed.
And on Friday 4 June, the Perugia prosecutor's office ordered new unrepeatable investigations on RCS's Naples servers. Investigations also ordered by the prosecutor of Florence, Luca Turco, as part of the proceedings opened in the Tuscan city after the complaints of Palamara and Cosimo Ferri.
THE NEGOTIATION INITIATED BY CY4GATE FOR RCS LAB
"Aurora SpA is the controlling shareholder of Rcs Etm Sicurezza SpA (owner of the" RCS Lab "brand) and of certain companies in Italy and abroad", reads the note from Cy4gate, "CY4, as part of its development plan in the cyber intelligence and cyber security sector, it is evaluating the execution of a potential transaction involving the acquisition of one or more of these companies ". Cy4gate specified that with the Aurora shareholders "a mere non-binding request was defined in order to start, on an exclusive basis, a due diligence activity currently underway".
CAPITAL INCREASE IN SIGHT
At the moment, neither the structure nor the scope of the transaction have yet been defined. However, the Cy4gate board of directors announced that it had submitted for the approval of the shareholders' meeting "a possible capital increase with the exclusion of the option right reserved for institutional investors up to a maximum amount of 110 million".
WHAT IS CY4GATE
Cy4gate is the company founded in 2014 as a joint venture between Elettronica SpA and Expert System SpA The latter left the capital in June 2020 with the listing of Cy4gate on the Aim list of the Stock Exchange. Conceived to design, develop and produce technologies and products, systems and services that are able to meet the most stringent and modern requirements of "Cyber Intelligence & Cyber Security" expressed by the Armed Forces, Police Forces, Intelligence Agencies and by companies, on the national territory and on the foreign market.
ATTENTION OF DEFENSE
"The digital and cyber sectors – in which Cy4Gate operates – are also among the central themes of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr)" declared the Undersecretary for Defense, Stefania Pucciarelli, during a meeting with the CEO Emanuele Galtieri, at the Cy4Gate headquarters in Rome on April 22nd. "I am sure that we will also be able to seize the opportunity offered by the Pnrr to enhance entrepreneurial initiatives such as Cy4Gate that will allow our country to consolidate its dominance over state-of-the-art technologies that will prove increasingly decisive, an added value in the protection of interests and safety of citizens and institutions ”, concluded Pucciarelli.
And now Cy4gate has expressed an interest in integrating Rcs Lab.
WHAT RCS LAB DOES
As stated on the website , RCS has been operating since 1993 in the world market of services in support of investigative activities.
The Milanese company deals with the design, production and assistance in the operation of equipment intended for the electronic control of telecommunications equipped with all the functions required for use in investigations by the Judicial Authority.
RCS has about 200 employees.
JUDICIAL AUTHORITIES, LAWS AND SECRET SERVICES BETWEEN CUSTOMERS
There are three categories of customers who rely on RCS services and products, as stated on the site.
First of all, the judicial authorities and law enforcement agencies: they essentially use devices and equipment for telephone and environmental monitoring on a large scale. They operate mainly in the listening rooms of the 167 public prosecutors' offices.
Secondly, the special forces: they develop targeted and specialized activities, operating in a sophisticated technological environment, in specific fields of action. And thirdly, the secret services and intelligence: their needs are concentrated on small devices dedicated to the direct interception of single targets, to the processing and decoding of the data obtained.
THE PROPERTY
With a share capital of 7,000,000 euros, the company is 100% controlled by Aurora Spa.
THE TOP
In addition to the chairman Alberto Chiappino, Fabio Cameirana (CEO) and Michele Tomba make up the board of directors.
THE NUMBERS
The Milanese RCS Spa recorded a turnover of 32,526,163 euros in 2019, an increase compared to the 28,335,276 euros of 2018. The profit also grew to 4,001,077 euros (compared to 2,982,896 euros in 2018). The costs of production amounted to 31,191,780 euros.
The company boasts a total of tangible fixed assets with a value of 1,642,304 euros, and a total debt of 24,144,971 euros.
THE SUSPENSION OF RCS FOR THE PALAMARA CASE
But precisely on the day of the communication of interest by Cy4gate for RCS, the latter ends up in the crosshairs of the prosecutor.
In the provision of last May 4, the prosecutor Giovanni Melillo ordered "the suspension, with immediate effect, and until further notice, of the assignment to the company Rcs Spa of new assignments for the supply of functional services for carrying out telematic interception activities passive and active ”as reported by the newspaper La Verità .
UNDER INVESTIGATION THE HEAD OF THE IP DIVISION OF RCS
"The person in charge of the collection of RCS, the engineer Duilio Bianchi, – continues La Verità – ended up under investigation in Florence with accusations of fraud in public supplies, false ideology in a public act by induction and false testimony before the CSM".
Reason? "His division used without the knowledge of both servers located at the Naples Public Prosecutor's Office rather than in the judicial offices of Rome, as had been declared and authorized by the Perugian investigators" reports the Truth .
The investigation was launched following a complaint by Palamara and Cosimo Ferri, a member of parliament and a magistrate on leave. In recent weeks, again on the mandate of the prosecutor of Florence, in coordination with that of Naples, the postal police carried out an inspection on the server of the Neapolitan city, from which, among other things, a contact dated 8 September 2019, from the computer virus inserted in the Palamara cell phone to the Naples server, after the interception activities had formally ended on May 30 of the same year.
NEW ASSESSMENTS ON RCS SERVER ARRANGED BOTH BY THE FLORENCE PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE …
Now the Deputy Prosecutor of Florence "given, in particular, the outcome of the inspection activities carried out", "found that the delegated judicial police acknowledged that they did not proceed with the acquisition of the aforementioned traces" and therefore considered "that it is necessary to proceed to unrepeatable activity aimed at acquiring a copy of the traces of the telematic interception ordered by the Public Prosecutor of Perugia, including the log files ", has ordered that the judicial police proceed with the acquisition of a copy of the traces already identified.
Also at the request of the Turkish attorney, a "copy of the log files of interest must be extracted, referring to the time period that elapses from the date of inoculation of the computer sensor to the date of execution of the unrepeatable technical assessments".
The new investigations will be carried out by the judicial police officers on duty at the Cnaipic of the postal police. Two people are being investigated in the context of the Florentine procedure, while Palamara and Ferri are the offended party.
… BOTH FROM THAT OF PERUGIA
Finally, the GUP of Perugia Piercarlo Frabotta "in order to decide on the request for an expert opinion made by the Palamara defense" ordered, during the preliminary hearing held yesterday morning at the Capitini center, that unrepeatable investigations be carried out on the twenty files, referable to the Trojan on the phone of the former CSM councilor, still present on the RCS server in Naples.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/intercettazioni-che-cosa-succede-a-rcs-lab-che-finira-a-elettronica/ on Sat, 05 Jun 2021 07:57:13 +0000.