The Binance Exchange faces heavy sanctions in Nigeria. What happened ?

The situation was mixed with confusion at the Binance exchange, after it was believed that the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange had broken out of the bottleneck by raising the white flag of CZ, its former president, and agreeing to the settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice. it seems that the stock market has entered a new crisis due to illegal actions... This time in Nigeria.

Binance Exchange employees in Nigeria under security guard over national security concerns

In an article from February 29, I mentioned Bloomberg Nigerian authorities raided Binance's illegal offices and arrested two exchange executives days after the central bank announced that Nigeria was losing money on unregistered cryptocurrency exchanges.

In other words, these arrests were made because Binance was operating illegally in the country, and in particular allowed Nigerians to use peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, that is to say without a third party. Nigerian authorities have also banned access to Binance in the country and decommission its services.

However, Zachari Mijinyawa, spokesperson for the national security adviser, confirmed that these were not "arrests", but rather ongoing "meetings and discussions", and that these were a “matter of national security”.

For its part, Binance has announced that it wants to cooperate with Nigeria, but does not intend to pay any fine:

"Our goal is to establish good relations with the government and people of Nigeria. We want to restore our services to Nigeria very quickly, but we do not intend to pay fines for our employees or our services."

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Rumors of fines of up to $10 billion for this reason

In recent days, rumors suggest that Binance will have to pay $10 billion in fines in Nigeria. Due to illegal operations carried out to the detriment of the naira, the country's currency.

This information comes from the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, which claims that Binance contributed to the fall of the naira by allowing Nigerian citizens to illegally speculate on it.

“The platform determines the exchange rate in the country, which is illegal. But the central bank is the only authority that can determine the exchange rate in the country.This was announced by Bayo Onanuga, spokesperson for President Bola Tinubu.

In the same BBC article, comments attributed to Bio Onanuga were broadcast, claiming that Binance faces fines of up to $10 billion, more than double what the cryptocurrency exchange already has to pay to the United States for a settlement with the country's Department of Justice.

However, these comments were dismissed hours later by a Binance official, who spoke with Nigerian media platformHe confirmed that he had discussed ways to resolve the issues with Nigeria. But no demand for $10 billion has been heard. Bayo Onanuga also confirmed that his comments were distorted and that the Nigerian authorities were not considering imposing a fine of such an amount.

It seems that Binance is not so innocent in Nigeria... the cryptocurrency exchange has already been stripped of its status as a local fiat currency. Nigeria today finds itself facing serious economic problems due to the devaluation of the naira. It is one of the worst performing currencies in the world.

This crisis pushed the country to attack several cryptocurrency exchanges. Including Binance, but also Kraken and Coinbase, on allegations of economic sabotage through speculation on the local currency, the naira.