BREAKING: House of Reps Moves to Summon, Arrest Binance Top Executives, Details Emerge

• House of Reps committee on financial crimes has announced that it may order the arrest of Binance executives
• This came after the executives failed to appear before the committee and instead sent a legal representative
• The House condemned the move, vowing to continue its probe on the financing of terrorism and other financial crimes against the firm

Legit.ng journalist Esther Odili has over two years of experience covering political parties and movements.

The House of Representatives committee on financial crimes has resolved to recommend invoking its powers to subpoena and arrest executives of Binance following a $10 billion fine.

As reported by The Nation, this followed the failure of executives of the company to appear in an investigation hearing by the committee on Monday, February 4.

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The chairman of the committee, Hon Ginger Obinna Onwusibe, said the company executives were to appear before them to answer questions on a petition bordering on the financing of terrorism, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial crimes.

Onwusibe frowned at the legal representation sent by the company for the hearing, The Nigerian Tribune reported.

The lawmaker noted that at the last session, it was resolved that the officials must appear by themselves. But the lawyer representing Binance, Senator Ihenyen, said, among other reasons, executives of the company, which is not based in the country, were apprehensive because two of their executives were arrested recently and were still in custody.

Hon Onwusibe said:

“Binance is not here. We have taken a position on it in our last sitting that we are not going to entertain legal representation from Binance and that position stands.

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“Based on the fact that Binance is not here, we need to make a recommendation to the House of Representatives for the House to invoke its powers of subpoena to issue a warrant for the leadership of Binance to be arrested and be brought to this Committee to answer questions of the grave allegations levelled against them in the petitions brought to us by the Empowerment for Unemployed Youths and Niger Delta youths Council.”

NCC orders telcos to block Binance

In related news, Legit.ng reported that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) ordered telecom companies to restrict access to Binance and other cryptocurrency websites.

This was because some industry experts insisted that the continuous fall of the naira may be linked with some manipulative operations of digital platforms like Binance and other digital assets.

According to reports, digital asset platforms were frequently used to manipulate FX values by creating fictitious transactions that either drive up or down values.

Source: Legit.ng