In an urgent attempt to save the naira, members of the House of Representatives are pushing for the arrest of Binance executives for allegedly causing economic harm.
This decision was made during a meeting of the House Committee on Financial Crimes on Monday, March 4.
The lawmakers agreed to suggest that the House use its authority to summon and arrest Binance executives since they did not show up for the committee meeting.
The committee’s chairman, Ginger Obinna Onwusibe, stated that the company’s executives were supposed to attend to address concerns about terrorism financing, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial crimes.
Onwusibe was unhappy with the legal representation sent by the company for the meeting.
He mentioned that during the previous session, it was decided that the officials must appear in person.
However, Binance’s lawyer, Senator Ihenyen, explained that the executives were hesitant to attend as two of them had been recently arrested and were still in custody.
“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,” Obinna said.
“Based on the fact that Binance is not here, we need to make a recommendation to the House of Representatives for the House to invoke its powers of subpoena to issue a warrant for the leadership of Binance to be arrested and be brought to this Committee to answer questions of the grave allegations levelled against them in the petitions brought to us by the Empowerment for Unemployed Youths and Niger Delta youths Council.
“This Committee has resolved to recommend to the House to invoke its constitutional powers by issuing a subpoena and a warrant for Binance executives to be arrested and brought to this committee to answer these questions regarding relationship financing of terrorism, money laundering, and other financial crimes as stated in the petition including evasion of tax.
“We thank the petitioners for unearthing these grievous financial crimes going on in this country for more than six years now. Binance has been operating in the financial space of this country for more than six years and they have not less than 20 million Nigerians that they are exploiting.”
