Whatsup News can report that the Akufo Addo administration and a group of Israeli hackers that the government reportedly sneaked into the country recently are set to face charges for violation of end-user license for hacking and spy equipment brought into the country by the Israelis.
Reliable sources within the Israeli intelligence apparatus have told Whatsup News that security agents are closing in on Israeli cyber giant Verint and Quadream as serious investigations have been launched into reports that the Akufo Addo administration had contracted these companies to hack into the electoral system of Ghana.
The gadgets being used in this clandestine operation are regarded as highly classified and should not be used by tech mercenaries because it can only be bought by governments. The device is also not meant to be used on spying on citizens as is suspected in the US$ 20 million contract between the Akufo Addo administration and the private tech contractors.
The highly sensitive gadgets are reportedly being used by the mercenaries to gain backdoor access into the election computer system in Ghana as the country heads for the polls on December 7, 2020.
Calcalist, a reputable Israeli daily business newspaper has been trailing Verint and Quadream, saying they have refused to make any comment when they were contacted about the reports that they were undertaking hacking operations for the Akufo Addo government.
On its October 1, 2020, report in both its online and hardcopy edition, Calcalist stated: “Among the Israeli companies whose employees went to Ghana are Israeli cyber giant Verint, and the cyber company Quadream. Verint said “There is no response,” and the CEO of Quadrari did not respond to Calcalist’s request.”
On September 28, 2020, Daily Post, a pro-National Democratic Congress (NDC) newspaper published a daming report that the Akufo Addo administration had smuggled in Israeli hackers to manipulate the election system in Ghana.
But shortly after the report, the Minister of Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah went on air to flatly deny the reports saying: “What is the Israeli IT expert coming to do in the collation of results?” Elections are held at the polling station so we do our campaign at the polling station . . ”
However, Whatsup News sources, including a retired top military officer of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and a retired agent of Israel’s intelligence agency, MOSSAD (name remains anonymous) confirmed that a consortium of systems integration companies specialising in breaching protected computer systems called RNTC had indeed travelled to Ghana on a secret mission recently.
The group of highly-trained cyber experts were reported to have arrived in Ghana on August 24, 2020 ad have been whisked away promptly to lodge at the Oak Plaza Hotel along the Spintex Road in Accra.
In December 2016, insiders tell of how the then-opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) may have been able to breach the electoral system and potentially influenced the results. The NPP Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong has made no secret of that speculation,
boasts on several media platforms of how the NPP reportedly manipulated the 2016 elections.
During the elections in 2016, the NPP had raised alarms that the then-incumbent NDC was using another Israeli Company, Superlock Limited, to manipulate the elections. However, the NDC denied that allegation completely.
This time, the Daily Post went ahead to name the 14-member crew engaged by the inner sanctum of the Akufo Addo administration.
They are Danino Adi, an IT Consultant; Segal Stav Mark, IT Engineer; Lilling Iddo, Project Manager; Pianazek Sean Pascal, trainer; Gurgov Boris, an IT Engineer; Waisel Amit, IT Engineer; Shoshan Almog Levi, Development Engineer and Krieger Yonatan, an IT Technician.
The rest are Shaleve
Haran, a Pre-sales engineer; Shwartz Shlomo, an Electronics Engineer; Guy Samuel Joseph, Sales Director of Magal Security System; Goldenberg Shahar, Business Development; Cohen Amit, CEO of High Technology Company RINC and Shaked Noam, CEO of BSW High Tec Company.
Investigations into the ownership structure of the company RTNC shows that it works with Blue Skies World (BSW) and that both companies are owned by the same person- Yossi Romano.
BSW is also owned by an offshore company in Spain also called Blue Skies World Spain SL.
Our source who retired from the MOSSAD alerted that the operations of the Israeli’s tech mercenaries in Ghana smacked of espionage: “I can already say that that kind of business behaviour – using different companies in Israel and abroad for defense and Intelligence purpose, suggests that the owners need this structure to circumvent the Israeli defense export permission known as API or DECA”
“This is an operation being led by RTNC Group (a group that I know since they tried to work with me in the past) – They are sort of system integrators also at the intelligence domain. They don’t have their own capacities and usually, they are joint venting (sic) with other companies or freelancers,” the retired spy told our investigators.
Further investigations into the background of the mercenaries show that the RTNC Group had joined forces with a company called Verint, Mavnir (used to be Comvers) and also possibly with the notorious NSO, the Israeli company that sold the notorious NSO Group Technology Limited that supplied Ghana with the dubious $6 million listening equipment during to the National Communications Authority (NCA), resulting in the recent conviction of the former NCA Board Chairman, Eugene
Baffoe-Bonnie and several others for pocketing the money.
Our Israeli source says he is confident about the involvement of the NSO Group because Danino Adi, the individual identified as “IT consultant” in the Daily Post story as being part of the delegation to Ghana is strongly linked to the NSO Group.
The former MOSSAD agent told Whatsup News that he recognizes the rest of the names in the story and indicated that most of them are Freelancers in the field of Intelligence, Cyber Security and Security Systems even though they were all given generic titles for the operation in Ghana.
According to him, the operations in Ghana possibly involves using Passive and Active Communication Interception capabilities for intelligence purposes which might include sophisticated cyber-attacks and other operations that might include attacks on the electoral commission’s IT infrastructure/architecture, as speculated by the newspaper report.
The intelligence sources believe that the operation could be in its early stages considering the number of senior-level management numbering 14 that were part of the trip to Ghana.
“Looking at the real position of the 14 individuals, we noticed that the CEO, CFO, Business Development Manager were all part of the trip. That could mean they could have come to sign a contract,” our source noted.
The only way to beat the insidious operations is for target organisations to immediately implement secured communication capabilities, experts have advised.
The Akufo Addo administration has increasingly come under scrutiny for the militant and reconnaissance capabilities that his ruling party in frantically building towards the December 7, general elections.
The Akufo Addo campaign is no stranger to similar reports in the past. While in opposition, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer’s campaign was accused of smuggling in Serbian and South African combat mercenaries to train the party’s militia groups. The then administration of the NDC was forced to expel these individuals.