The Nigerian government has ordered the arrest and detention of two senior executives at Binance in Nigeria as part of a crackdown on cryptocurrency trading websites in the country.
According to the UK-based business news platform Financial Times (FT), the passports of the Binance executives were confiscated.
The names of the executives were not provided by the news organization.
The executives had traveled to Nigeria after the country banned several cryptocurrency trading websites the previous week, but they were detained and had their passports seized.
Officials have not disclosed the reasons for the detention of the Binance employees, and it is unclear if they have been charged with any violations of Nigerian law.
The Bola Tinubu administration had blocked Binance and other crypto firms to prevent what it sees as ongoing manipulation of the forex market and illegal movement of funds.
Some of the trading platforms that have been banned include Forextime, OctaFX, Crypto, FXTM, Coinbase, and Kraken.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) expressed concerns on Tuesday about $26 billion that went through Binance Nigeria in the last year, according to sources that are unknown.
CBN governor Yemi Cardoso is worried about the large amount of money flowing through Binance Nigeria, and is emphasizing that the sources and recipients of these funds have not been properly identified yet.
“We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these entities and suspicious flows at best.
“In the case of Binance, in the last one year alone, $26 billion has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify,” he stated.
