The Joint Cybersecurity Committee (JCC) has arrested 422 people for engaging in illegal digital lending activities that violated the rights and privacy of their customers.
The JCC, which comprises the Cyber Security Authority (CSA), the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), conducted a swoop last Monday at the premises of four suspected illegal digital lending companies in the Greater Accra Region.
They are Mascedi Consult, Valley A. Consult, Makto Technology Limited and FourCredy.
The JCC also seized 654 mobile phones, 22 laptop computers and about 800 SIM cards from the suspects.
The swoop followed 270 complaints of cyber bullying, harassment and death threats received by the JCC’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) from victims of these platforms within the past six months.
The Director-General of the CSA and the chairperson of the JCC, Dr Albert Antwi-Boasiako, announced this at a press conference in Accra yesterday.
He said the illegal digital lenders and their financiers had infringed on the constitutional rights of individuals and violated the data protection principles under Ghana’s Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843).
He assured the public that the perpetrators would be punished according to the law and that the JCC would continue to sensitise the public on how to avoid such attacks.
He also said the success of the swoop showed the government’s commitment to sanitising the country’s cyberspace and enabling the public to transact business safely.
The Executive Director of EOCO, Commissioner of Police (COP), Maame Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Danquah, said investigations had identified 150 unlicensed digital loan application platforms that used death threats and non-consensual distribution of private messages, images and videos to harass their customers.
She said they did that by exploiting the authorised permissions granted by unsuspecting victims who patronised their platforms.
She cautioned the public to desist from engaging with unlicensed financial entities online and advised them to be careful about what they clicked or installed on their devices.
The First Deputy Governor of the BoG, Dr Maxwell Opoku-Afari, said in a speech read on his behalf that the BoG had observed a growing trend of unlicensed entities providing credit products to the public through mobile applications in contravention of the law.
He said this posed risks to consumer protection, data privacy, identity theft, money laundering and terrorism financing, among others.
He said the BoG had established regulatory and supervisory systems to promote a digital financial service space of integrity that safeguarded the interest of consumers.