Abuja, March 1, 2024 – The Federal Government has imposed a $10 billion fine on the crypto trading platform, Binance, over allegations of influencing the country’s forex crisis.
Bola Onanuga, The Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Information and Strategy, disclosed this to the BBC on Friday.
Onanuga alleged that Binance profited substantially from its “illegal transactions” in Nigeria, while the nation suffered huge losses.
He said Binance was not registered in Nigeria and had no presence in the country, but people used the platform to arbitrarily fix dollar-naira rates, a practice which had negatively impacted on the value of naira.
Onanuga said the Binance team was already cooperating with the Nigerian government by providing useful information and had already suspended naira-related transactions on the platform.
“The platform fixes the exchange rate in Nigeria, which is illegal. The Central Bank of Nigeria is the only authority that can fix the exchange rate for Nigeria.
“Binance harbours a lot of people who fix exchange rates which impacted the country badly at a time when the government is trying to stabilize the economy.”
Onanuga said Binance influenced the foreign exchange rates through currency speculations which made the naira value to fall by almost 70% in recent months.
He said the platform had the potential to destabilize the Nigerian economy if left unchecked.
The Federal Government has been intensifying efforts to curtail Binance’s operations within the country, leading to Binance’s removal of the naira from its peer-to-peer feature known as the P2P market.
Two Binance employees were detained recently by the office of the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, in Abuja as part of an investigation into the cryptocurrency exchange’s operations in Nigeria.
Olayemi Cardoso, the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria ((CBN), on Tuesday said that about $26 billion had passed through Binance Nigeria from unidentified sources and users within a year.
The CBN boss expressed concerns about suspicious financial flows and illicit activities associated with cryptocurrency entities like Binance. (GBN)
