(VIDEO) Bawumia details how corrupt ECG staff sabotaged revenue system with ransomware

The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has revealed that some officials of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) sabotaged the government’s digital revenue collection system.

Speaking at the Annual General Meeting of anti-corruption agencies in Africa, the vice president said some workers of the IT unit installed ransomware that crippled the whole system.

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that prevents or limits users from accessing their system, either by locking the system’s screen or by locking the users’ files until a ransom is paid.

He said it took the intervention of the National Security to fish out the perpetrators.

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“They just kept it at GHC450 million every month. So, I said we needed to send in a team to digitalise the new collection of the Electricity Company of Ghana, so we sent in a team, and we began the process of digitalising.

“Can you believe that workers within the system sabotaged? They put ransomware into the whole system, and the system essentially collapsed. We had to send in national security to eventually find that some of the staff at the IT department were culpable?”

Dr Bawumia added that the culprits then demanded a ransom from the government to allow access to the system.

However, he said they were arrested, and the system was later restored.

“Anyway, they were arrested. And we restored the system, and we digitised the system, and we said that no more cash payments for electricity in Ghana. You only pay by your mobile money, electronic bank transfers. So that is now the case. Can you believe that from GHC450 million a month, collections have now gone to over a billion cedis a month,” he disclosed.