The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ola Olukoyede, has revealed that unbeknownst to young cryptocurrency traders in Nigeria, terrorists are using them to trade to fund terrorism in the country.
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 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.
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.”
The EFCC boss said there was a need to adopt technology in tracking money used to fund terrorism in the country.
Olukoyede narrated how he was informed by a friend in the US Federal Bureau of Investigation that dollar bills across the world can be tracked with technology.
“It is important for us to adopt the use of technology,” he said.
“I was comparing notes with an assistant director in the FBI — a friend of mine. He said: ‘My brother, from our systems in the US, we can track every printed dollar anywhere in the world’,” he added.
The EFCC boss added that Nigeria must get to that stage where technology can be deployed to track naira notes used for terrorism funding.
