Seth Boampong Wiredu
Seth Boampong Wiredu, the lead suspect in a CNN investigative report over alleged attempts by Russia to meddle in the November 2020 election in the United States (US), has been dragged before an Accra Circuit Court charged with money laundering.
The suspect, according to the CNN, is in charge of ‘Eliminating Barriers for the Liberation of Africa’ (EBLA), a non-governmental organisation which it says is the headquarters of the troll account Russia is attempting to use in US election meddling.
According to the CNN, Wiredu goes by the name Amara from South Africa and per court documents filed yesterday, he is alleged to be engaging in Internet scam known in local parlance as ‘sakawa’.
The suspect who is an architect is alleged to have laundered over GH¢82,000 into Ghana through cybercrime.
His alleged crime was discovered following intelligence gathered by the National Security.
CNN Documentary
On
March 13, 2020, CNN aired an investigative piece that discovered how Russia is
trying to meddle in the upcoming presidential and congressional polls of the US
using trolls manned by people in Ghana and Nigeria.
According to the documentary, the operations headquarters of the Ghanaian troll were in a walled compound in a quiet residential
area in Accra.
It had been rented by a small non-profit group that called itself EBLA and they used the place as the headquarters for Ghanaians posing as Americans and also posting on social media.
Sixteen Ghanaians, mostly in their 20s, worked at the compound; some lived rent-free in a nearby apartment.
They were issued mobile phones, not laptops, and worked around a table. The EBLA trolls communicated as a group through the encrypted Telegram app, which is rarely used in Ghana.
CNN said Wiredu had claimed he used EBLA as an online activism for black people worldwide but also said it was rather Russia which was attempting to use the platform to meddle in US election.
Suspect
Appearing before an Accra Circuit Court yesterday, Wiredu pleaded not guilty and was granted bail by the court.
According to the charge sheet, intelligence gathered in December last year indicated that the suspect who resides in Novgard in Russia had been engaging in cyber scam and had been transferring various sums of money into Ghana through his unlawful cybercrime activities.
Wiredu was arrested on February 13 and during investigations and a forensic examination on his phone indicated that within a short spate of time, he had transferred GH¢82,443,48 into Ghana and concealed the origin of the money.
The accused is said to have struggled to give any tangible explanation of the source of the money when he was questioned during investigations.
He is expected to return to court on April 14 and has been ordered to report to the police twice weekly.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak