A Nigerian High Court instructed Binance Holdings’ operators to furnish the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) with thorough data and information regarding Nigerian traders on its platform.
Local news source Sahara Reporters said a judge named Justice Emeka Nwite decided on Feb. 29 after the EFCC filed a motion against the cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance.
An ex parte motion means only one side is there, and the other side doesn’t know about it beforehand, so they can’t argue against it.
The lawyer for the anti-corruption agency, Ekele Iheanacho, argued in the motion that Binance’s actions in Nigeria involve criminal elements.
This claim goes against Sections 38 of the EFCC Act, 2004, and Section 15 of the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022 (changed later), which say you must report suspicious transactions to the authorities or face penalties.
In a written statement, EFCC investigator Hamma Bello said we must finish looking into this quickly. We got a tip about money and bad things with Binance, the crypto website.
Binance Faces Nigerian Currency Removal
Bello said when they got the news, the EFCC team found people using cryptocurrency for bad stuff like figuring out prices, making sure things are true, and messing with the market. This messed up the foreign money market and made our money worth less than others.
The commission said that they told Binance operators how bad these activities were for Nigeria’s economy, which made them ask Binance to remove the Nigerian currency from their trading platform.
During an interview, Nathaniel Luz, CEO of Flincap, a platform for exchanging cryptocurrencies, mentioned that while the court order could benefit the Nigerian government, the ideal step for both Binance and the Nigerian government would be to sit down and talk about this matter at a roundtable discussion.
Bayo Onanuga, a presidential adviser on information and strategy, claimed that Binance and other cryptocurrency platforms tampered with the naira, causing a significant drop in the local currency’s value. He also proposed prohibiting platforms such as Binance in the nation.
Nigeria has become one of the quickest-expanding crypto economies globally in recent years. Additionally, it ranked as the second-largest economy in terms of crypto usage in 2023.
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