Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on October 7 warned government employees they could face arrest if state data is lost in cyber attacks or power outages.

Serbia endured about two million cyber attacks in August, the president said, calling them “the most severe, most extensive, largest attack on our digital infrastructure,” with origins in countries including Chile, Mexico, Russia and the United States.

“The Data Centre is very important,” he told staff at the opening of the House of eAdministration and innovation hub Ložionica. “It’s not a problem if they don’t want to keep the data in the Data Centre, but they will be arrested if we have a blackout like Spain, the Czech Republic and others had.”

He accused state institutions such as power utility EPS and the cadastre of losing data over the summer because employees failed to store it in the central system.

“If we happen to have no electricity for a whole day or two, and everything is lost, everyone will be arrested,” Vucic said.