In a desperate move to rescue the naira, federal lawmakers in the House of Representatives have called for the arrest of the executives of cryptocurrency company, Binance, over alleged economic sabotage.
This was the resolution of the House Committee on Financial Crimes during its sitting on Monday, March 4.
The lawmakers resolved to recommend that the House invokes its powers to subpoena and arrest executives of Binance following their failure to appear before the committee.
Chairman of the committee, Ginger Obinna Onwusibe, said executives of the company were to appear before them to answer questions on a petition that borders on the financing of terrorism, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial crimes.
Onwusibe frowned at the legal representation sent by the company for the hearing.
The lawmaker said at the last session it was resolved that the officials must appear by in person.
However, counsel to Binance, Senator Ihenyen, said the Binance executives were apprehensive as two of their executives were arrested recently and are still in custody.
“Binance is not here. We have taken a position on it in our last sitting that we are not going to entertain legal representation from Binance and that position stands,” Obinna said.
“Based on the fact that Binance is not here, we need to make a recommendation to the House of Representatives for the House to invoke its powers of subpoena to issue a warrant for the leadership of Binance to be arrested and be brought to this Committee to answer questions of the grave allegations levelled against them in the petitions brought to us by the Empowerment for Unemployed Youths and Niger Delta youths Council.
“This Committee has resolved to recommend to the House to invoke its constitutional powers by issuing a subpoena and a warrant for Binance executives to be arrested and brought to this committee to answer these questions regarding relationship financing of terrorism, money laundering, and other financial crimes as stated in the petition including evasion of tax.
“We thank the petitioners for unearthing these grievous financial crimes going on in this country for more than six years now. Binance has been operating in the financial space of this country for more than six years and they have not less than 20 million Nigerians that they are exploiting.”
