The Federal Government, FG, has slammed a $10 billion fine on Binance cryptocurrency trading platform over the allegation of influencing the country’s forex crisis.
President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga who disclosed this in an interview on Friday said the fine was slammed on Binance due to its illegal operations, which contributed hugely to the devaluation of 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,” he said.
Onanuga noted that the trading platform profited substantially from its “illegal transactions” in Nigeria while the nation suffered huge losses.
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“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,” he added.
While stating that Binance influenced the increase in foreign exchange rates through currency speculation, which caused the Naira value to fall by almost 70% in recent months, the presidential aide said the organization’s staff cooperated with the government to provide information.
Credible News recalls that the FG, had earlier disabled the usage of the trading platform in the country, after which two senior executives of Finance were detained by security operatives as part of efforts to investigate the cryptocurrency exchange operations in Nigeria.
This move however necessitated the removal of Naira from the cryptocurrency peer-to-peer feature.
The arrest of the two officials was the government’s attempt to curb naira speculation and steady its free fall by clamping down on cryptocurrency exchanges.
