A deputy director at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olubukola Akinwumi, explained on Friday how Nigerians trading on Binance Holdings Limited’s platform use false names in the transactions.
Mr Akinwumi, who is the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) ‘s second prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of the cryptocurrency firm and its executive, Tigran Gambaryan, said this in his testimony before the trial judge, Emeka Nwite, of the Federal High Court, Abuja.
Led in evidence by EFCC’s lawyer, Ekele Iheanacho, the witness who heads the Payment Policy and Regulation Division in the Payments System Management Department of the CBN, said the bank did not issue any licence to the cryptocurrency firm to operate in Nigeria.
“In the course of carrying out our operations, we normally monitor development within the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), monitoring the activities of payment service providers and the usage of the payment system.
“We observed in doing that that Binance provides a trading platform where users trade virtual assets.
“And to consummate their transactions for the purpose of settlement of payments, the users make use of the payment system for the purpose of transferring or making payment to one another.
“These traders normally trade in pseudo-names (pseudonyms) that hide their identities and they are not authorised by the CBN” .
He said they discovered that platform users received and made payments or transferred payments to one another using the payment system to consummate transactions on Binance Peer-to-Peer (P2P) platform.
Binance documents
Submission of certified true copies of documents made available to SEC by Binance, which was equally made available to the investigating team at the office of the National Security Adviser, and pages generated on the firm’s website were tendered in evidence and marked as Exhibits 8 and 9 by the judge.
Mr Akinwumi said that Page 2 of Exhibit 8 introduced Binance as the world’s leading crypto exchange, with users from over 190 countries.
“They have the full address of the website on the page, which is https://www.binance.com.
“Binance has what is called Binance Academy. That is on page 16 of Exhibit 8.
“Generally, Exhibit 9 explains to Nigerians on how to deposit Naira in the Nigerians wallet on the Binance platform.”
“So, as I explained earlier, Binance maintains accounts and needs revenue for its services.
“Page 2 of Exhibit 9, under the Fiat Section, shows the rates applied for regular users.”
After giving his evidence, the judge, Mr Nwite, adjourned the matter until 16 July for cross-examination of the witness.
(NAN)