Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has issued a warning, on Thursday, about terrorists using unsuspecting cryptocurrency traders to launder money and fund their activities.
The EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede made this call amidst growing concerns about the potential misuse of cryptocurrency for illicit purposes.
Olukoyede spoke during an event organised by some civil society organisations in Abuja.
The programme, titled, “Multi-stakeholders’ national dialogue on preventing terrorism financing and violent extremism,” was held at the Transcorp Hilton Hotels, Abuja on Thursday.
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According to the EFCC, terrorists are exploiting the anonymity and ease of cross-border transactions associated with cryptocurrency to move funds undetected.
The agency fears unsuspecting cryptocurrency traders could be unwittingly facilitating terrorist activities by processing transactions for malicious actors.
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The EFCC boss said some of the people who received money to trade in cryptocurrencies did not know that their financiers were sponsors of terrorism.
He added that some of the 1,146 bank accounts recently frozen by the anti-graft agency were conduits for terrorism funding.
Olukoyede said, “Some of you are aware of our activities in the area of investigating virtual currency trading and the like of cryptocurrencies.
“They are potential platforms to fund terrorism. A lot of us don’t understand that. Some of our discoveries during the investigation of some of these platforms were mind-boggling.
“We thought Binance was a major one. Yes, it was. We are prosecuting them. But there are other platforms we have discovered.
“They used some of these young men. Some of them don’t know that the people who gave them money to trade are people who fund terrorism.”
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