The Federal Government has imposed a $10 billion fine on the crypto trading platform, Binance, over allegations of influencing the country’s forex crisis. Bola Onanuga, The Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Information and Strategy, said this to the BBC. Onanuga said that Binance profited substantially from its “illegal transactions” in Nigeria, while the nation suffered huge losses. He said Binance was not registered in Nigeria and had no presence in the country, but people used the platform to arbitrarily fix dollar-Naira rates, a practice which had negatively impacted on the value of Naira.
Onanuga said the Binance team was already cooperating with the Nigerian government by providing useful information and had already suspended Naira-related transactions on the platform. “The platform fixes the exchange rate in Nigeria, which is illegal. The Central Bank of Nigeria is the only authority that can fix the exchange rate for Nigeria. Binance harbours a lot of people who fix exchange rates which impacted the country badly at a time when the government is trying to stabilise the economy.”Onanuga said Binance influenced the foreign exchange rates through currency speculations which made the Naira value to fall by almost 70% in recent months.
