Nigeria wants $10 billion from Binance as “retribution” for losses

LAGOS — Nigeria will ask cryptocurrency exchange Binance to pay $10 billion for alleged losses caused to the government by its operations, an aide to President Bola Tinubu said.

“This country recorded massive losses from their operations and the government is asking for small money from them,” said Bayo Onanuga, the president’s adviser on information and strategy, to the BBC. “We are asking them to pay us close to $10 billion in retribution because they really messed up our economy in a very short time,” he said.

Onanuga claimed that crypto traders have used Binance to manipulate Nigeria’s currency, undermining the central bank which he said is “the only authority that can fix the country’s exchange rates.” He confirmed reports earlier this week that two members of the Binance team “were arrested when they came to Nigeria.”

Nigeria’s national security adviser’s office said law enforcement agencies and the central bank are investigating Binance’s operations in the country, according to news publication Premium Times.

Binance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Semafor Africa.

On Tuesday, Nigeria’s central bank governor Yemi Cardoso claimed $26 billion have been traded in and out of Nigeria on Binance in the past year by unidentifiable sources. He alleged that “certain aspects’' of crypto transactions across platforms involved “illicit flows.”

The detention of Binance staff came a week after Nigerian telecom providers shut off user access to the websites. Binance has since disabled several of its most used services in Nigeria, especially trades that involved using the naira to buy the USDT digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar.

In December, Nigeria’s central bank cited “current global trends” as its reason for lifting a three-year old ban that barred banks from relationships with crypto trading platforms. Certain conditions, including valid licensing by Nigeria’s securities and exchange commission for crypto companies, were part of new requirements that seemed to foreshadow a welcoming of crypto into the financial system.

It is not the first time Nigerian authorities have sought a large sum from a foreign company for alleged infractions. Nigeria fined South African telecoms company MTN $5.2 billion for failing to disconnect 5 million unregistered SIM cards. The company negotiated the fine down to $980 million, which it paid in 2019.

Nigeria is struggling with low growth. Africa’s largest economy grew by 2.7% last year, the lowest rate since the country’s recession in 2020, and the value of the country’s naira currency has plummeted in the wake of economic reforms introduced since Tinubu took office last May.