Israeli firm to provide prisoner tagging equipment

An Israeli company has won a multi-million-euro bid to supply the prison authorities with a robust electronic monitoring system for convicted inmates as of next year, taking over from a company owned by the brother of a parliamentary secretary.

Since 2019, the service has been provided by ProSecure Ltd, a company co-owned by John Ellul, the brother of the Office of the Prime Minister Parliamentary Secretary Andy Ellul, through repeated direct orders.

But this will now change as the Tel Aviv-based company Attenti Group was awarded the contract by the Department of Contracts earlier this week after a drawn-out evaluation of a tender first published in 2022.

The contract is now expected to be signed once a 20-day appeals time window ends.

The Israeli Group, which, according to its website, already operates in 30 countries and monitors some 200,000 people globally, will provide 300 monitoring units, including electronic bracelets, apart from designing and running the system for a cost of some €2.6 million over the next four years.

The Israeli bid was the lowest of all the bids.

Consisting of Attard and Co (Industrial) Limited and John Ellul as shareholders, ProSecure Ltd was selected by the government in 2019 to start a short pilot electronic tagging project at the prison.

No tender was ever issued, and ProSecrure and the ‘pilot project’ was extended for almost five years. Ellul’s company was paid €316 a month for each bracelet provided to the prison authorities.

According to information recently given in parliament to Nationalist Party MP Mark Anthony Sammut, ProSecure was paid a total of €455,000 between 2019 and last August.

The government never explained how and why Ellul’s company was selected for this project.

A former police officer who headed the Forensic Unit for years, Ellul was made director of studies at the Academy for Disciplined Forces as soon as Labour took over. After resigning, he joined ProSecure, where, apart from being a shareholder, he is also a director with Benjamin Arrigo and Dean Micallef.

According to a new law, electronic tagging will be provided for people sentenced to a prison term of not more than one year and in cases where a restraining order is imposed or when a court issues a temporary protection order.