Nigeria Detains Binance Executives as It Investigates the Crypto Exchange: Reports

• Two Binance executives were intercepted by Nigerian officials and their passports seized when they landed in the country.
• The crypto exchange did not have permission to operate in the country, the securities regulator said last year.

Nigeria has detained two executives of the Binance crypto exchange after they flew into the country, media outlets reported.

The two were detained by the country's Office of the National Security Adviser and their passports seized, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The two had been invited by Nigeria to meet officials, and were intercepted when they landed on the grounds that Binance had been operating in the country illegally, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

The executives have not been charged, but could face allegations of currency manipulation, tax evasion and illegal operations, Bloomberg reported.

“It is not necessarily arrest per say,” Zakari Mijinyawa, a spokesman for the National Security Adviser told Bloomberg. “Meetings and discussions are ongoing. It’s a national security issue and an interagency process is on.”

On Tuesday, central bank Governor Olayemi Cardoso claimed Binance Nigeria moved $26 billion dollars worth of untraceable funds, media outlets reported.

"We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these entities and suspicious flows at best," Cardoso said at the time.

According to Cardoso, Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, police and national security adviser had started investigating crypto exchanges, the FT reported. The agencies want to see a list of past and present Binance Nigeria users, a person familiar with the matter told the newspaper.

Last year, the country's Securities and Exchange Commission said Binance Nigeria was not authorized to operate in the country.

Neither Binance nor the Office of the National Security Adviser responded to emails seeking comment.