UNITA has requested a hearing of the Angolan ministers of Finance and Telecommunications and the directors-general of the intelligence services due to the cyber-attack against the Finance Ministry.
“Several days after the cyber attack, nothing more has been communicated, not even to the officials, much less to the citizens, which is of great concern to the UNITA parliamentary group,” the statement said.
The Ministry of Finance (Minfin) announced on 22 February that the technological platform supporting its activities with access to emails and shared folders was the target of a cyber-attack on 17 February, “with unidentified origins and motivations”.
Despite the situation, Minfin said in a statement published on its website, the revenue collection systems, including the Service Portal, Taxpayer Portal and the State Integrated Financial Management System, “are fully operational”.
Minfin gave assurances that the Public Finance Information and Communication Technology Service (SETIC-FP) is identifying “the scope of the disruption and the potential constraints caused on workstations at the Ministry of Finance and subordinate bodies, mainly the internal and external correspondence dematerialisation programme.
The SETIC teams have been working since the attack on “resolving and normalising the email system and the d2e shared documents folder, thus mitigating the impacts of such a situation on the productivity of Public Finance staff.
In the same document, UNITA said that in another letter it had also requested a hearing with the Angolan Interior Minister “due to the existence of militias” in the municipalities of Luanda and Cazenga, arguing that “many complaints have been made by citizens” of these places about groups created and organised by the municipal administrator, Tomás Bica.
UNITA requested that, as these were “issues of a security nature, as well as of a nature of violation of citizens’ rights,” the committees of defence, security, internal order, former combatants and veterans of the country and of human rights, petitions, complaints and suggestions of citizens should be present at the hearing.
