Naira’s Free Fall: Nigerian Govt imposes $10Billion fine on Binance
The Nigerian government has demanded a $10 billion fine on Binance, a famous cryptocurrency trading platform.
Bayo Onanuga, President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, verified this in a BBC interview on Friday morning.
According to the presidential adviser, the fine was imposed due to Binance’s illicit operations, which contributed significantly to the recent devaluation of the country’s currency, the naira.
“The platform fixes the exchange rate for the country and it is an illegal rate. The CBN is the only authority that can fix the exchange rate for the country,” Onanuga was quoted as saying by BBC.
He added, “Binance platform harbours people who fix the exchange rate which quickly affects the Nigerian economy for the time when Nigeria is trying to stabilize the economy.”
“Binance staff cooperated with the government to provide information.”
Binance subsequently removed the naira from its peer-to-peer feature.
The feature, known as the P2P market, allows users, buyers, and sellers to transact without the intervention of a third party.
Bayo Onanuga had also said if not stopped, Binance would destroy the Nigerian economy because of the way it arbitrarily fixes foreign exchange rates.
Their detention in Nigeria was in an attempt to curb naira speculation and steady its free fall by clamping down on cryptocurrency exchanges.
During the week, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, said $26 billion passed through Binance Nigeria from unknown sources and users in one year.
He stated this on Tuesday in Abuja at the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting of the apex bank, the first since he assumed office in September 2023.
This followed the free fall of the naira and clampdown on Bureaux de Change by President Bola Tinubu’s administration in an attempt to steady the rapid decline.
Cardoso said the government was “concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these entities, and suspicious flows at best”.
“There is a lot that is going on now as a result of collaboration between the different agencies which include the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission), the police and of course the office of the NSA (National Security Adviser) and in due course as we progress and have more information to share, we will certainly share and suffice to say we are determined to do everything it takes to ensure that we take charge of our market or put differently, do not allow others to manipulate our market in a way that ends up distortionary and sub-optimizes for all Nigerians.
“We will not accept it and we will do everything possible to prevent any of these kinds of infractions from taking place.”