The Nigerian government has detained two senior executives at Binance, as the country continues to crack down on cryptocurrency exchanges.
The executives arrived in Nigeria following the country’s decision to ban several cryptocurrency trading websites last week.
Reuters reports that they were detained by the office of the country’s national security adviser and their passports seized.
On Tuesday Olayemi Cardoso, Nigeria’s central bank governor, named Binance at a press conference while discussing the funds flowing through crypto exchanges.
“We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these entities [crypto platforms] and suspicious flows at best,” Cardoso told reporters. “In the case of Binance, in the last one year alone, $26bn has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify,” he added.
According to Cardoso, Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, police and national security adviser were co-ordinating an investigation into cryptocurrency exchanges. The authorities were demanding to see a list of Binance’s Nigerian users since its inception, a person familiar with the matter said.
