The House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes is on the verge of calling for the arrest of Binance’s CEO, Richard Teng and other senior executives, over allegations of terrorist financing, money laundering, and tax evasion.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency company, has been flagged by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, for its alleged illicit activities.
The CBN says Binance manipulated foreign exchange rates through currency speculation and rate-fixing, which have seen the naira lose nearly 70 per cent of its value in recent months.
The Committee sent out an invitation to the company for an interrogation. Binance opted to send legal representation instead, much to the disappointment of the lawmakers.
Binance counsel, Ihenyen explained that the company was apprehensive about sending more top executives to Nigeria, given that two of its executives were locked up last week.
News of the detention was previously reported by Pilot News.
Last week, the two executives—an unnamed British and American citizen—were detained in Abuja by the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu.
The detention took place a day after they flew into the country to negotiate with the authorities regarding a ban on several of their operations as well as other crypto trading websites, including Coinbase, and Kraken.
But the House rejected the appearance by proxy.
“As long as the committee is concerned, Binance is not at this meeting because we have said severally that we do not want representation by lawyers but the chief executives should appear before us,” Ginger Onwusibe, the chairman of the committee, said on Monday.
“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.”
Onwusibe added, “The committee will be forced to recommend to the House to arrest Binance executives since they have failed to appear before the committee.”
Ezinwanne Onwuka, senior staff reporter and columnist with WAP is a Nigerian-based writer and content developer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her interests include reading, writing, researching and graphic designing.
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