The Nigerian government has ordered the arrest and detention of two senior executives at Binance in Nigeria in fresh move to crackdown on cryptocurrency trading websites operating in the country.
According to Financial Times (FT), a UK-based business news platform, the passports of the Binance executives were seized.
The news organization, however, failed to provide names of the two Binance executives.
It gathered that the executives flew to Nigeria following the country’s decision to ban several cryptocurrency trading websites last week but were detained with their passports seized.
Officials did not provide details on why the Binance employees are being detained and it remains unclear on whether they have been charged with any violations of Nigerian law.
Recall that the Bola Tinubu administration had blocked Binance and other crypto firms to avert what it considers continuous manipulation of the forex market and illicit movement of funds.
Other trading platforms banned include Forextime, OctaFX, Crypto, FXTM, Coinbase, and Kraken.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday raised concerns over $26 billion that flowed through Binance Nigeria over the past year from “unidentified sources”.
CBN governor, Yemi Cardoso, expressed worries over the significant volume of transactions passing through Binance Nigeria, emphasizing that the origins and beneficiaries of these funds are yet to be adequately identified.
“We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these entities and suspicious flows at best.
“In the case of Binance, in the last one year alone, $26 billion has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify,” he stated.
