[RCU] read-only access to IMAP account with RC

How hard would it be to configure RC so that it gives read-only access to an IMAP account?

Detailed explanation:

There's a repository with a lot of emails, a group of people need access to the messages, but just to read and search them. No delete, no reply, no compose, nothing like that. Pure read-only. And search, which is very important. There are no folders, everything is in one place; the Folders field can disappear. But the server is probably going to be IMAP, for practical reasons.

Any idea how hard would this be? Would a lot of code hacking be involved?