Two Binance crypto exchange platform executives have been taken into custody by the Nigerian government.
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The Binance executives, whose names have not been disclosed, were apprehended by the national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, on Friday and their international passports were seized, reported Financial Times (FT), a business news outlet based in the UK.
The executives had arrived in Nigeria after the country banned several cryptocurrency trading websites the previous week.
No explanation was given by the officials for the detention of the Binance employees and it is still uncertain if they have been accused of breaking any Nigerian laws.
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Nigeria’s crypto industry faced a tense week as regulators implemented major changes, cutting off access to the websites of several exchanges and fixing USDT/NGN exchange rates.
Binance was not the only platform affected, as others such as Forextime, OctaFX, Crypto, FXTM, Coinbase, and Kraken, among others, were also shut down.
On Wednesday, many crypto exchanges prohibited users from purchasing the USDT and USDC stablecoins.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday expressed alarm over $26 billion that went through Binance Nigeria in the past year from “unknown sources”.
Olayemi Cardoso, the CBN Governor, voiced his concern over the large amount of transactions involving Binance Nigeria, stressing that the sources and recipients of these funds have not been properly identified.
“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 said.
