Spy network on Italian personalities discovered with support from the mafia and foreign spies

MADRID 27 Oct. () –

This Sunday the Milan Prosecutor’s Office has revealed more data about the spy network to Italian personalities such as the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, or businessmen and that it would have the support of high public officials, the mafia and even secret services of foreign countries.

Prosecutor Francesco De Tommasi explains in the arrest request that the suspects “are subjects who enjoy high-level support, in various environments, including that of the mafia and the secret services, even foreign ones” and who often promise and they boast of being able to intervene in investigations and trials to block judicial initiatives.

The investigations “have shown that the criminal network in which the group moves via Pattari (headquarters of the Equalize company, in Milan) is very extensive and is structured, so to speak, in a network, in the sense that each member of the association group and each external collaborator of the same have in turn other contacts, in the police and in other public administrations, through which they can illicitly obtain confidential and sensitive data and information,” added the prosecutor.

Some 60 suspects are being investigated, of whom six have been arrested, according to the Milanese Prosecutor’s Office, which has concluded that the group of hackers managed to access thousands of confidential documents and communications, including banking or tax information.

One of the detainees, considered the person most responsible for the plot, is a former police officer, Carmine Gallo, who had access to individual profiles with personal data of these people.

The group even had itineraries and location data of the espionage victims, taking advantage of mobile phone data or credit card purchases. The network had even gained access to the central police, health and financial databases. The group would have gathered, among other data, 800,000 files from the Police database on criminal records.

Among those spied on is Prime Minister Meloni, specifically her bank account movements, possibly thanks to the collaboration of a worker from a bank in Bari who had already been fired. Meloni’s sister, Arianna, and the president’s former partner, Andrea Giambruno, have also been spied on.

Two of the detainees boasted of having managed to hack an email address assigned to the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, also according to the Prosecutor’s Office document requesting the arrest warrants, which is more than 1,000 pages long.