The Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Samuel Dubik Mahama, has revealed that the company lost between GH₵400 million and GH₵500 million due to a ransomware attack.
In an interview with Bernard Avle on The Point of View on Channel One TV, Dubik Mahama confirmed the Vice President’s earlier statement and detailed the severe impact the ransomware had on ECG’s operations.
Mahama explained that the attack occurred during a critical period when the company was undergoing an operational turnaround, which involved upgrading and fixing their systems.
“Don’t forget that, within those periods, we were going through an operational turnaround, where we were fixing our systems…That was the same year within which we had the ransomware attack thing that we managed to take care of.
“For me, what I will say to that is there’s an investigation going on, so maybe probably, the Vice President is privy to the final investigation report or has some inkling towards whatever is going on there. But I have not been furnished. There was an attack, there’s no two ways about that.
He emphasised, “Looking at a company that has the potential of raising about GH₵50 million to GH₵60 million in a day if you’re not able to vend for a week, how much have you lost? How are you going to bring yourself back into the game? So yes, we did lose a lot, we had a few good companies consult for us and advise us. And we have a quantity of the amount of money that was lost ranges between GHC400 million to GHC500 million within that period.”
On May 9, the Vice President and flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, disclosed that some officials of the ECG sabotaged the government’s efforts to digitalize revenue collection.
During the Annual General Meeting of Anti-corruption Agencies in Africa, Dr Bawumia stated that some staff of the IT unit at ECG introduced ransomware, which prevented the system from working properly.
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