By Abiola Olawale
The federal government reportedly detained two top executives of the popular cryptocurrency trading platform, Binance, on Wednesday.
A report by Financial Times, said the two executives were detained following the breakdown of talks between Nigerian government officials and Binance, over alleged manipulations in foreign exchange trading and speculative activities.
The executives visited Nigeria in response to the country’s recent crackdown on various cryptocurrency trading platforms. During their stay, they were apprehended by the Office of the National Security Adviser, and their passports were confiscated.
According to reports, the two Binance executives detained were American and British.
The New Diplomat reports that following the naira’s significant devaluation, which led to inflation soaring to an almost 30-year high of 29.9%, the Nigerian government has intensified its regulation of cryptocurrency platforms.
Binance is an online exchange where users can trade cryptocurrencies.
Nigeria is one of the largest peer-to-peer crypto markets in the world. Between July 2022 and June 2023, crypto transactions in the country reached $56.7bn, according to Chainalysis.
It would also be recalled that at a press briefing on Tuesday, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Dr Olayemi Cardoso, named Binance at a press conference while discussing the funds flowing through crypto exchanges.
“We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these crypto platforms and suspicious flows at best,”
“In the case of Binance, in the last one year alone, $26bn has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify,” he added.
According to Cardoso, Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, police and national security adviser were co-ordinating an investigation into cryptocurrency exchanges.
