Two Binance executives, an American and a British-Pakistani, have been detained in Nigeria on the orders of National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu over alleged involvement in foreign exchange manipulations. The Federal Government obtained a court warrant to detain the men for 12 days, pending further investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The arrested executives were taken into custody at a guest house operated by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA). The Federal Government plans to ban cryptocurrency trading owing to alleged sharp practices on their websites. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Dr. Olayemi Cardoso, claimed that billions of dollars had passed through the channel from unidentified sources in the last year alone. The NSA has asked Binance to provide data on its operations in Nigeria over the past seven years. The arrested executives declined a request to delete all Nigerian information from their platform, insisting that they would not do so until they were taken to their countries' embassies. The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, clarified the reasons for the clampdown on Binance and other cryptocurrency trading websites, declaring that failure to stop Binance will lead to the destruction of the economy.
Index to Nigerian Newspapers
