Nigerian government has detained 3 executives of the crypto-trading platform Binance and demanded $10 Billion from the Asian firm over allegations of influencing the country’s forex crisis.
This was disclosed by the special adviser to President Bola Tinubu on information and strategy, Bayo Onanuga, in an interview with the BBC on Friday.
According to Onanuga, Binance profited substantially from its “illegal transactions” in Nigeria while the nation suffered huge losses.
He noted that Binance is not registered in Nigeria and has no presence in the country.
According to Onanuga, people used the platform to arbitrarily fix dollar-naira rates. He said the practice negatively impacted the value of the local currency.
He further noted that the Binance team was already cooperating with the Nigerian government by providing useful information, and had already suspended naira-related transactions on the platform.
Onanuga said, “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,” he added.
The presidential aide added that Binance influenced the increase in foreign exchange rates through currency speculation, which caused the Naira value to fall by almost 70% in recent months.
