EFCC Freezes over 300 Illegal Forex Trading Accounts

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has frozen over 300 illegal accounts connected foreign exchange (FX) trading.

EFCC Chairman, Mr Ola Olukoyede disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday.

The anti-graft agency boss said a court granted an order to freeze the accounts, adding that some Nigerians operating those illicit accounts are worse than Binance.

“We got an order to freeze those accounts imagine what would have happened if we didn’t seize those accounts,” he said.

“There are people in this country doing worse than Binance,” he said.

Olukoyede revealed that over $15 billion flowed through one of the platforms last year, which was not regulated by financial regulators.

He made the disclosure barely 24 hours after Kenya’s police service reportedly nabbed the Binance Regional Manager for Africa, Nadeem Anjarwalla.

On March 22, Anjarwalla escaped from an Abuja guest house where he and Tigran Gambaryan, his colleague, had been kept by the federal government.

Anjarwalla was said to have escaped after guards led him to a nearby mosque for prayers during the Ramadan fast.

Anjarwalla and Gambaryan were detained by the Office of the National Security Adviser after they arrived in Nigeria on February 28.

The duo was charged with tax evasion and money laundering by the federal government.

On February 27, 2024, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr Olayemi Cardoso, said $26 billion passed through Binance Nigeria from unidentified sources in one year.

Cardoso said the CBN was collaborating with different agencies, including the EFCC, the police, and the ONSA to combat illicit financial flows in the country.

The CBN under the leadership of Cardoso has been devising strategies – fiscal and monetary policies – to stabilise the nation’s economy and strengthen naira.

Nigerians have blamed the current economic hardship on the removal of fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu, but the CBN claimed some of the challenges of the economy also come from illegal forex trading.