By Kolawole Ojebisi
The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC), Mr Ola Olukoyede, has updated Nigerians on how the agency recovered some money from the digital investment platform Crypto Bridge Exchange trading platform.
Olukoyede also disclosed that the anti-graft agency under his leadership has apprehended people in connection with the CBEX fraud.
The EFCC boss revealed this in an interview with TVC on Monday.
He added that the EFCC has made significant progress in its investigation into the crypto scheme that scammed many Nigerians.
“We have gone far with CBEX. We have been able to recover a reasonable amount of money,” he said.
While highlighting the challenges confronted by the agency in its efforts to recover the funds, Olukoyede stated that the money was in cryptocurrency.
He, however, stressed that despite this challenge, EFCC managed to trace and recover part of it.
Meanwhile, the EFCC Boss noted that converting the funds back to dollars in cash was not easy because it required going through similar crypto processes.
He stated, “Even though in the crypto wallet, the same way the money was taken from them. There is no way you will get them in dollars. There is no way you get the dollars in cash without necessarily going through the same process.”
The EFCC boss added that some suspects have already been arrested, noting that the agency is still pursuing others who are on the run.
“We have gone far. We have made a reasonable arrest.
“We are not going to give out much because we don’t want the process to be disrupted. We are still after quite a number of people we have declared wanted,” he said.
He, however, said the investigation has been challenging because the fraudsters used “non-custodial wallets,” which means there was no identity attached to the accounts, making it harder to trace the criminals.
“We are still investigating a lot of wallets and the wallets they created are called noncustodian wallets; in other words, no KYC. So, you can’t trace it to anybody.
“So, from the noncustodial wallet, they moved it to some wallets in Europe, Eastern Europe, particularly Cambodia and from there, they dispersed the money. We have been able to block some of these wallets where money has not been dispersed.
“That is to the extent that we have gone. I even learnt that there are still some of these perpetrators and Nigerians are still falling victim. I believe people should learn from this,” he said.
Recall that in April, CBEX collapsed, leaving investors with reported losses of over N1.3 trillion.
