President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration has slammed no fewer than a $10 billion fine on Binance amid a crackdown on the crypto exchange platform in desperate moves to salvage the value of the nation’s local currency.
President Tinubu’s Special Adviser on information and strategy, Bayo Onanuga made this known on Friday morning in an interview with the BBC.
“Binance is fixing enhance rate for Nigeria and it’s illegal. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is the only authority that can fix the exchange rate in the country.
“Binance profited substantially from its “illegal transactions” in Nigeria while the nation suffered huge losses,” Onanuga said.
Onanuga claimed that Binance is not registered in Nigeria and has no presence in the country. He alleged that people used the platform to arbitrarily fix dollar-naira rates; a practice he said negatively impacted the value of the local currency.
He explained further that the Binance team were already cooperating with the Nigerian government by providing useful information, and had already suspended naira related transactions on the platform.
Nigeria nevertheless wants Binance to pay at least $10 billion in retribution, Mr Onanuga said.
The National Security Adviser (NSA) office on Thursday confirmed the arrest of two Binance executives on the allegation of operating a business worth billions without the requisite registrations and documentation.
“I am confirming that the office of the national security adviser, as part of ongoing operations in the foreign exchange market with the CBN and other law enforcement and security agencies, is coordinating an interagency investigation into the operations of Binance,” Zakari Mijinyawa, head of Strategic Communication at the Office of the National Security Adviser said.
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso, on Tuesday, stated that more than $26bn was channelled through a cryptocurrency platform, Binance, in the last one year.
Cardoso said many of the crypto transactions are through “sources and users that the apex ban cannot adequately identify”.
