The Accra Circuit Court, on Monday, August 31, presided over by Her Honour Susana Aduful, has granted bail in the sum of GHc300, 000 to the administrator of Empress Leak, Anderson Ofosuhene Anim.
The said man was arrested by a joined working force of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of the Ministry of Communications, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service and the National Cyber Security Technical.
The administrator of the notorious website, empress leak, a website known for the publication of child pornographic, adult sexual content and the man at the centre of electronic child pornography in the country, was not only granted bail because his plea was not taken by the court, but he is to produce two sureties with property documents in his name to the court.
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He was charged with Publication of obscene material and general provision for cyber offense under section 280 of the criminal code 1950 and 123 of act 772, extortion under section 151 of act 29 1960, and Money laundering section 1(a) of the anti-money laundering, Act, (Act 749).
The prosecutor on the case, Inspector Princess Tetteh Boafo, told the court that, the case docket has been sent to the Attorney General’s Department waiting for its advice.
The case was later adjourned to October 12, 2020.
BACKGROUND
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of the Ministry of Communications, in collaboration with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service and the National Cyber Security Technical Working Group, has nabbed the administrator of the notorious website, empress leak.
Empress Leak is a website known for the publication of child pornographic and adult sexual content. The website records about 600,000 monthly users who are located in Ghana, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
The Minister of Communications, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful revealed this during a joint press briefing held on Monday, August 10, 2020, in Accra, to announce the arrest of the operator.
Addressing the media last week, she noted that, an investigation to clamp down on activities of empress leak was launched after a female Senior High School student, filed a report on January 6th, 2020, with the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-GH) of the NCSC. The report by the victim who is below 18 years, was to alert the CERT-GH team of an uploaded sexually explicit video of her to the website.
The Minister further noted that preliminary investigations uncovered information on the website’s registrant information, associated domain names, email addresses, telephone contacts as well as residential address of the administrator, Mr. Anderson Ofosuhene Anim.
She said, “As part of Government’s efforts towards the protection of Ghana’s cyberspace, the National Cyber Security Centre in 2019 launched a Cybercrime/Cybersecurity Incident Reporting Point of Contact (POC), to provide an effective mechanism for citizens to report suspected and identified cybercrime and cybersecurity incidents.”
The Minister stated that since the operationalization of the PoC, the NCSC, it has received countless cybercrime/cybersecurity incidents reports from the public.
Key among these reports is the publication of non-consensual intimate images (sextortion), online impersonation, online fraud, malware attacks, online blackmail, website defacement, among others.
Written By: Abigail Osaebea
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