Binance suggests bribe sought to make Nigeria problems 'go away'
financialpost.comBinance Holdings Ltd. said it was asked for a large payment in Nigeria to make problems there “go away,” and repeated calls for the release of its employee who’s been jailed in the West African nation.
Chief executive Richard Teng made the claim in a blog on Monday, detailing how the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange tried to engage with Nigerian authorities, including a Jan. 8 meeting in Abuja, the capital, where it was confronted with criminal allegations.
“As our employees were leaving the venue, they were approached by unknown persons who suggested to them to make a payment in settlement of the allegations,” Teng wrote. The blog did not say if the individuals were from the Nigerian authorities.
Later that day, Binance’s local lawyer was “presented with a demand for a significant payment in cryptocurrency to be paid in secret within 48 hours to make these issues go away,” Teng wrote. The amount in question was US$150 million, the New York Times reported separately, citing people it didn’t identify.
Nigeria, which blames crypto speculators for some of the naira’s steep recent losses against the U.S. dollar, disputed this account.
“Investigators are confident that the sequence of events is not as Binance has indicated, nor the material facts,” said Zakari Mijinyawa, spokesman for Nigeria’s National Security Adviser. “It will of course be for the courts to decide, and for due process to be followed and justice delivered.”
The incident marks the latest legal problems for Binance, whose founder Changpeng Zhao was ordered on May 1 to spend four months in prison in the United States for failures that allowed cybercriminals and terrorist groups to freely trade on its platform.
Binance in November agreed to pay US$4.3
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